Sensitive information

July 28, 2026 · View on GitHub

Guidance

Never include real sensitive or personally identifying information in documentation or screenshots. Replace all sensitive data with generic placeholders before publishing.

Examples

Do:

curl -u admin:<API_KEY> https://example.com/api/v1/status

Replace <API_KEY> with your actual key.

Don't:

curl -u admin:P@ssw0rd123 https://192.168.1.45/api/v1/status

Notes

Personal information

Replace with generic placeholders:

Names: use "Admin User," "User A," or a generic role name
Email addresses: use user@example.com
Phone numbers: use a clearly fictional number

Sensitive technical data

Replace with clearly generic placeholders:

IP addresses: use ranges from RFC 5737 (192.0.2.x, 198.51.100.x, 203.0.113.x) or the documented F5 example address 165.160.15.20
Passwords: use <YOUR_PASSWORD>
Password hashes: use <PASWORD_HASH>
API keys and OAuth tokens: OAuth 2 tokens start with eY — search for and replace any that appear in content or screenshots
UUIDs: replace with xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
SSH keys: replace with <SSH_KEY>
Domain names: use example.com, example.net, or example.org per RFC 2606

Internal F5 information

Never publish in external documentation:

Internal IP address ranges (172.25–172.32.x)
Internal machine names or domain names (f5net.com, f5.net)
Internal URLs or license server addresses
Code names for product versions or releases

Screenshots

Before publishing any screenshot:

Remove or obscure any visible personal information
Replace sensitive data with placeholders
Check for UUIDs, OAuth tokens, and API keys in visible UI fields
Look for sensitive words like "secret" in visible content

External links

Limit links to external non-F5 sources. When necessary, link only to reputable foundational sites. This reduces the risk of prompt injection in AI-assisted documentation workflows.

What counts as a reputable foundational site:

A foundational site is the official documentation for an open source project, standard, or tool that directly governs how a referenced technology works. Examples include:

The official docs for a tool the reader must install or configure (for example, Helm, Kubernetes, Harbor)

IETF or W3C standards documents
CNCF project documentation for projects used in the product stack
Link to the most specific stable versioned page available. Avoid linking to /main/ or /latest/ paths, which may drift or break. Avoid linking to UI walkthroughs or admin tasks that don't apply to the reader's workflow.