As you probably know PII stands for "Personal Identifiable Information".
If you are working on an app in a certain industry that requires PII information to be hidden, that industry usually has clearly defined guidelines published by the enforcing entity on what data meets the PII threshold. You will want to lookup those guidelines and implement your app accordingly.
Maybe you are building an app in an industry that doesn't have PII guidelines but you are building the app for someone else. Then it is up to that app owner to indicate what they may want to hide. As a responsible app developer, you might want to have that conversation with them.
If this is an app you are building for yourself and you just want to be a responsible developer and protect personal information then the rule of thumb is this:
Mark as PII any information that can directly or indirectly be attributed to a specific person.
Direct information are things such as Name, Address, Phone, Email, Height, Weight, Hair Color, Shoe Size , SSN, Passport #, etc.
Indirect info might be Account Numbers, Family member info, Documents/Images that contain personal info, etc
Marking info as PII does 2 things:
- Uses encryption to pass the info between devices.
- Hides the info from log files or any other externally produced files.
I hope this helps!
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