Use case

Hide bank account numbers when screen sharing

5 min read

  • Smart Blur
  • United States
  • Screen sharing
  • Screenshots

Some screens are mostly other people’s money. Payroll lists every employee’s direct deposit details, billing portals show the account each customer pays from, and tax software holds the routing and account number for the refund. Those are exactly the screens that end up on a call when something breaks, or in a screenshot sent to the vendor’s support desk.

A routing number on its own is public; it only identifies the bank. Put it next to an account number and a name, and it’s enough to set up payments from that account.

If you handle financial data, the FTC has rules

If your business offers financial products or services, the FTC’s Safeguards Rule probably applies to you, even if you’ve never thought of yourself as a financial institution. The FTC’s own list includes mortgage brokers, payday lenders, collection agencies, financial advisors and tax preparation firms. The rule requires a written information security program, including access controls that limit who can see customer information, and regular reviews of it.

Since May 13, 2024, covered businesses have also had to notify the FTC, no later than 30 days after discovery, when unencrypted information about at least 500 customers is acquired without authorization. One screen share won’t get anywhere near 500 people. The access controls are the point, though, and they don’t mean much if the numbers they protect are up on a shared screen. State breach notification laws, which every state has, usually count a name with a financial account number as protected too.

What Smart Blur already catches

Smart Blur hides these numbers on the page, in your browser, so they’re blurred before the call sees them or the screenshot is taken. There’s nothing to upload and no account to create.

The built-in Patterns cover more of this than you might expect:

  • Card numbers, 13 to 19 digits, with or without spaces or dashes.
  • Routing numbers. They’re nine digits, so they look like an unformatted Social Security number and get blurred.
  • Most account numbers. US bank account numbers run from 6 to 17 digits. Written as one run of digits, nearly every one of those lengths is caught by the built-in card and phone number patterns.
  • IBANs, for international transfers, once you switch that pattern on.

The exceptions are account numbers of 6 digits and of 8 digits. Plenty of banks and credit unions use short numbers, and to a blur tool they’re just numbers.

A pattern for short account numbers

Custom patterns are free, and this one doesn’t need any regex. Open the Smart Blur panel, go to Settings → Patterns → Your own patterns, and choose Describe it:

  • Leave Starts with empty.
  • Then 6 to 8 digits.

That blurs every number of six to eight digits, which on most sites is far too much. So before you add it, tick Limit to specific domains or URLs and enter only the sites where bank details show up: your payroll system, billing portal or tax software. On those pages, losing the odd invoice number to the blur doesn’t matter much.

Paste a few lines from one of those pages into the Try it box to see what gets hidden, then click Add pattern.

If your system labels account numbers with a fixed prefix, such as ACCT, put that in Starts with and the account number’s length after it. That’s narrow enough to leave on everywhere. The custom patterns guide has more examples like this.

Before the next call or screenshot

Smart Blur is on by default. If you’d rather leave it off during the day, Smart Blur Pro’s Share Shield switches it on when you start sharing from your browser.

Open a real payroll or billing page and check that every account and routing number is blurred. Numbers that are already masked, like ****4821, are left alone, which is usually what you want.

For screenshots, blur the page first and then capture it with any tool, so the numbers were never in the image. Smart Blur Pro’s Screenshot button does both in one step.

A photo of a voided check or a scanned bank letter is an image, so patterns can’t read it. Cover those with Click or Draw from the panel.

Bank details usually come with a Social Security or tax ID number nearby, and those are covered in the SSN and passport post. If you’re about to walk a vendor through payroll, the Zoom, Meet and Teams guide shows how to share just the tab or window you need.

This post explains the law in general terms and isn’t legal advice.

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