Personal and Encrypted Fields | Overview - Zoho Forms

Personal and Encrypted Fields

Table of Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Marking Fields as Personal
  3. Encrypting Fields

Overview

When you collect sensitive data from your respondents, such as Social Security Numbers, phone number, passport number, medical data, etc. through your forms, there is a risk that this data will get misused. To ensure that the sensitive data shared by your respondents is securely stored and handled, use the Mark as Personal and Encrypt options in Zoho Forms for certain fields. 
Field Encryption


For every field that you have marked as personal or encrypted, you will be alerted with a prompt while:
  1. Configuring Email Notifications using the fields
  2. Printing or downloading Reports
  3. Including PDF of form submission
  4. Configuring Integrations using the fields
  5. Configuring Document Merge (using WebMerge)

Marking Fields as Personal

Personal data is any information belonging to a recognized or identifiable natural person (i.e. the data subject). There is a wide range of personal data that includes email addresses, location, mobile numbers, identification numbers, etc. By marking a field as a personal, you can apply a higher degree of sensitivity to the data collected using the field and exercise more control over how this data is processed. For instance, when you try to export the data from the respective field or insert the data into the triggered email, a warning will appear. Only after providing additional confirmation could the action be carried out for the data collected on the specific field marked as personal.

To mark a field as personal,

  1. In the Form Builder, go to the Properties of a field.

  2. Under Privacy, select Mark as Personal.
    Field Properties

The following fields can be marked as personal:

  • Basic Fields: Single Line, Multi Line, Number, Decimal, Name, Address, Phone, Email, Date, Date-Time, Website, Currency, File Upload, Image Upload

  • Advanced Fields: Signature, Unique ID

Encrypting Fields

You can add an extra layer of security to your form respondents' data while it is stored by enabling field-level encryption. Encrypting data protects your data from any possible data leak or unauthorized access. It is the process of encoding information to make it accessible only to the authorized parties.


To encrypt a field,
  1. In the Form Builder, go to the Properties of the field.

  2. Under Privacy, select Encrypt.
    Field Properties

Field types that can be encrypted:

  • Basic Fields: Single Line, Multi Line, Number, Name, Address, Phone, Email, Date, Date-Time, Website, File Upload, Image Upload, Audio/Video

  • Advanced Fields: Signature, Unique ID

In Report prints and downloads, encrypted fields will be masked.

 

Only the following comparison operators are compatible with encrypted fields for the search filters applied in All Entries and Reports  sections :

  1. is

  2. is not

  3. is empty

  4. is not empty

Notes

Note:

  • You can add up to 25 encrypted fields in a form.

  • Once a field is encrypted in your form, this action cannot be reverted.

  • Encrypted fields are available only in our paid plans.

  • Signature and File/Image upload fields cannot be masked in reports.

  • It is not possible to sort the entries for an encrypted field in the All Entries section and in Reports.