Identity profiles

Overview

Most of Lex Cloak looks for things it recognises: something shaped like a Social Security number, something that reads like a name. That is the right tool when you cannot know in advance who is in a document, and it is most of what you need.

But there is usually one person you already know about. The patient the report is about. The claimant. The child in the custody file. For that person you are not guessing, and you should not have to rely on a guess. An identity profile is where you say who they are, and Lex Cloak takes the strings you typed and looks for the forms they realistically appear in.

The two work together. A profile covers the person you can name. Detection keeps looking for the ones you cannot.

Making a profile

Open the Identity Profiles section in the sidebar and choose + New. Give the profile a name so you can recognise it later, then add whatever you know: name parts, a date of birth, a Social Security number, a phone number, an address, a case or record number, or any other text.

You do not have to fill everything in. One name is enough to start, and you can come back and add more later.

Type each detail however you normally write it. A Social Security number works as 412589037, 412-58-9037 or 412 58 9037, and it takes on the dashed form as you type so you can see it was read. A date of birth works as 07/23/1979, 1979-07-23 or July 23, 1979, and there is a calendar button beside the field if you would rather pick one.

Where a date could be read two ways, the American order wins: 03/04/1982 is March 4 rather than April 3. The date that was understood is always shown back to you under the field, so a date is never quietly taken to mean something other than what you meant. If the first number cannot be a month, there is only one sensible reading and that is the one used, so 13/04/1982 is 13 April. If a year is written short, as in 07/23/79, Lex Cloak asks for the full year rather than choosing a century for you.

Press Enter to save the profile, or Escape to close the form without saving.

What one entry covers

Each thing you type expands into the forms it realistically appears in. A date of birth entered once is looked for as 03/14/1975, 1975-03-14, and March 14, 1975. A name covers first-last, last-first, initials, and a title if you gave one. A phone number covers the dotted, dashed and bracketed forms.

Nothing is inferred. Every form Lex Cloak looks for comes mechanically from something you typed, so there is no guessing about who this person might also be.

Printing a stand-in name

A profile can carry a pseudonym, something like Patient A or Claimant 1. When you set one, it is printed on the boxes covering that person, so a reader can follow who is who through the document without learning the name.

Only that person's boxes carry it. Anything else redacted in the same document keeps the label you chose for the export. Where a box is too small for the stand-in name to be read, it stays a plain box rather than printing something illegible.

Turning a detected name into a profile

If the scan already found the person, you do not have to retype them. Find their name in the review list and choose Make a profile. The form opens with the name filled in, ready for you to add their date of birth and anything else you have.

Where a profile is stored

A profile is a small file that sits next to your documents, named something like Jane Doe.profile.lexcloak.json. You can see it in Finder or Explorer, open it, copy it, and delete it without asking the app.

That is deliberate. A profile holds a lot about one person, so it lives inside the same folder (and the same disk encryption) as the case it belongs to, rather than somewhere under the application. Nothing about it is uploaded, and everything stays on your machine.

You can also keep a profile somewhere of your own and pin it, so it is offered on every document rather than only the ones in that folder. Pinned profiles can be set to be offered each time, or to switch themselves on automatically.

Applying a profile and checking the result

Switching one on

Each profile in the sidebar has a switch. Turning it on applies it to the document you have open and shows how many matches it found. Turning it off withdraws them again. It does not re-scan, so it is quick, and a profile you switch on for one document is not switched on for the next unless you pinned it that way.

The check after the redaction

After the boxes are burned in, Lex Cloak reads the finished file back and looks for the profile's details again. If it finds none, the export summary says the check came out clean for that person. If it finds something still readable, it tells you which page, and asks whether you want to look before saving.

This is a per-person statement, not a general guarantee about the document. It is checking the strings you named.

When the case is over

A profile outlives the documents it was built for. Once the case is closed, the profile file can be the only place that person's details still exist in that folder, so delete it when you are done with it. The remove option in the sidebar names the file it is about to delete before it does.