Show HN: Secure sensitive info while recording videos live or screen sharing

I always use OBS "virtual camera" when screen sharing, and this can help a lot. You can zoom in on part of the screen, have multiple views of parts of your screen, cover parts of the screen (I usually have the image of myself from the camera in the corner, and that can easily be moved around to cover areas of the screen), etc.

Overall OBS can just create a generally better presentation, and make you look competent, in addition to helping with this specific issue. And of course it is free.

As someone who has recorded 500+ tech video screencasts while occasionally dealing with sensitive information, here's what I've come up with:

1. Do whatever you can to minimize sensitive info exposure before you even start streaming or recording. For example I created a shell script which backs up and clears my shell history and does other things[0]. Make a note to use a browser where your history is cleared too.

2. Sometimes it's easier to say screw it and show the sensitive information with full intent that you're going to change your API keys, password or whatever sensitive data is shown. This ends up being much better because now you don't need to worry about blurring anything because you know you'll re-roll your keys. This is really good for pre-recorded videos vs live streams.

3. If you need to hide secrets, put all secrets into an .env file and have a .env.example file handy to show how to set them up without showing your real secrets. This is another way to eliminate ever having to blur anything and have a 0% chance of ever exposing a secret.

4. If you need to hide something, put a solid color over it instead of blurring it so it can't be reversed.

5. One of the pain points with hiding something in a video is the sensitive info might be on a page where you're scrolling up and down on the page which means you need to move your solid color rectangle or expand it based on which frame is showing. But overall this isn't too bad with most video editors since you can click and drag a rectangle onto a specific point in your timeline. If you adhere to the first 3 steps, you'll often only need minor hiding in all of your streams and videos.

6. Often times you're hiding unexpected things, like maybe you're logged into GitHub to make a video about an open source project but you view your GitHub feed which shows a list of private organizations you do freelance work for. This is the type of stuff to watch out for, which IMO also makes certain editor plugins that try to hide secrets not that useful since you can hide them in other ways, and it sets you up with a false sense of security because there's many other sensitive things outside of your editor to think about.

I'm not trying to deter you from building your tool, but I suppose I'm having trouble seeing how I would use it in practice. I'd be curious to hear how other folks handle this.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/bash-aliases-to-prepare-recor...

This looks neat, it's a shame I wouldn't be caught dead paying $24/year for a browser extension. I recommend that you seriously rethink your business model, even if that means consolidating it into a one-time purchase. Remember, you're selling zero-margin-utility here: this isn't an SAAS (and if it is, I'd argue you've done something wrong). Even still, it's hard to make the case for using this tool over other, free options...

After entering my email I see the downloads page but it has links for Chrome and Firefox only. The landing page listed Safari and Edge in the "available for" section; are these browsers supported at the moment?

I like the idea of being able to save the blurred areas, having standard sets of these for popular sites (e.g., GitHub API keys, Twilio, AWS, etc.) would be worth paying for.

As others have mentioned, I'd like more secure ways to blur the area, e.g., completely blanking it out, or filling with random text and then blurring.

Edit: Would also be useful to replace the text instead of blurring, that way viewers could see realistic information without revealing real keys, etc.

Edit: Please allow the plus (+) symbol for emails.

To avoid that, I always run zoom or obs or any other tool inside a Xephyr (main desktop is on walynand) and eventually a container if I have to navigate files. I've seen so many horror stories, aws keys, paswwords, porn...

Flameshot is also a great screenshot tool and includes a blurring tool among other things.. It also has a filled rectangle drawing tool that is probably better at hiding stuff...

Impressive - I have a feeling this will come in pretty darn handy with corporate documentation and training videos. Kudos!

Blurring is reversible and insecure and it's strange that the makers seem unaware of this.

Its been months of work building and improving blurweb app i will love your all input on how we can make it better