Help for ChatScrubber

1. Introduction
2. Quick Start
3. The Menu
4. Sanitizing Text
5. Regular Expressions
6. Problems

• Chat logs are a series of text exchanges that occur during a field project between the various staff members.
• Chat logs are saved to keep a record of events that happened during the project.
• The ChatScrubber is used to remove unwanted statements from a chat log. Undesirable statements may include security risks such as IP addresses and passwords. The user may also wish to sanitize long sections of unnecessary text.
• This program is not autonomous and still requires the user to choose which text to sanitize.
• Words of interest are highlighted and the user can quickly sanitize sections of text.

• This program was written in java and requires at least java 1.6 to be run properly. It can be run on any machine that has a version of java greater than 1.6.
• The jar file is /net/work/bin/misc/chat_scrubber/ChatScrubber.jar and should be copied to the machine you are working on.
• To run the program from a unix machine type on the command line 'java -jar ChatScrubber.jar'. (Make sure you are in the correct directory).
• On most windows machines the ChatScrubber.jar icon can be double clicked on to run the program.
• See the Sanitizing Text section below for an explanation of the scrubbing process.

• The top menu bar is located at the top left hand side of the application. It contains several important commands that are to be used while sanitizing text. Shortcuts are listed to the right-side of the commands. The main drop down called "File" contains a variety of commands for interacting with the program. The "Edit" drop down contains the undo and redo commands along with the Mark lines command. The "Regex" drop down contains commands that are specific to regular expression functions.

  
• The File menu items

  Load chat file. Choosing this item displays an open file dialog. The user should select a chat file that they would wish to sanitize. Save changes. This item will save the changes the user has made to the chat file. The sanitized text is saved with the original file name and ".san" appended to it. Show processed files. This will display a list of the files that have already been saved. Change sanitized statement. This option will change the statement that is inserted when the user clicks one of the sanitize buttons on the lower right of the program. Quit. This will exit the application.

• The Edit items

  Mark lines. Clicking this item will instruct the program to traverse the text and search for areas where the chat text matches the loaded regular expressions. Matching text will be displayed in red. undo. This will undo the most recent sanitation. redo. This will redo the most recent undo.

• The Regex items

  Load regular expressions. This displays another open file dialog. After selecting a file the loaded regular expressions will be replaced with the text from the file. Add regular expressions. Selecting this will display an input area for the user to add a single, new regular expression to the list of loaded expression. This will not overwrite any of the loaded expressions. Once the ChatScrubber program is closed, any new regular expressions will be lost from the list. Show regular expressions. This will display a list of the loaded regular expressions. Show regex matching stats. This will display a list of every regular expression that was matched in the text. It will also display how many times each expression was matched.

• To begin the user loads a chat file by going to the menu and selecting the Load chat file option. The user should select the desired file from the file dialog that appears.

  

• Once the file has been loaded the user should choose the Mark lines menu item (also Ctrl-M).

  

• The program traverses the text and checks for any areas that match the loaded regular expressions. Sensitive text is marked in red and the current flagged line is highlighted in yellow.

  

• After viewing the highlighted text the user can choose to either replace the text with a generic sanitized statement using the "Replace current with statement" button, or move to the next flagged line with the "next" button. Pressing the "back" button will highlight the previous flagged line. The user can press 'alt+down arrow' to go to the next line or 'alt+up arrow' to go back.

• The user can also select text with the mouse and replace this text with a generic statement using the "Insert statement at selected text" button. If you click in the text area the cursor does not appear. Clicking the "Insert statement at selected text" button without any selected text will insert a statement at the last clicked location.

  
• The statement that is inserted into the text can be changed by choosing the "Change sanitized statement" from the main menu. The original sanitized statements will still exist. After the user has updated the sanitized statement any new sanitations will contain the new statement.
• Many lines are flagged to tell the user of the ChatScrubber to watch for sensitive material. For example, the word "password" is flagged to show the user that there is a possibility of a password being revealed in the surrounding chatting.
• After sanitation is completed the user can save by clicking the save button, or using the save menu item in the menu. If any errors were made during the sanitation the original file still exists.

• The user is supplied with a generic set of regular expressions, but may also choose to load their own set of regular expressions. Contact Pierce Martin to request changes or additions to the default list.
• Regular expressions can be added in one of two ways.
• Load new file.
• To load a new set of regular expressions create a new text file with one regular expression per line.
• Comments can be denoted with "#".

• To load the new file choose the "Load regular expressions" menu item from the main menu and find the regex file you created.

  
• This will overwrite all of the current expressions.
• Single addition
• A single regular expression can be added to the current list by choosing the "Add regular expression" menu item.
• This will not overwrite any of the existing expressions but will append a new regex to the end of the list.
• Once the program is closed any single additions will be lost from the list.
• The "Show regex matching stats" menu item will show the user how many times each regex was matched in the chatting

• If you are having errors when trying to match text make sure that your regular expressions are correct. Invalid regular expressions or regular expressions that match any text may freeze the program. (For example the expression "[ab" will freeze the program because it is missing a closing brace).