Deprecate finance.maskedNumber for removal

[ST-DDT]

We want to deprecate the finance.maskedNumber() method for removal.

Reasons for removal

• The method has/had a bug for 6 months and it hasn't been reported at all -> low/no actual usage.
• Configuring the method is more time and code consuming than just adding the parenthesis and ellipsis manually instead.
• There is no real standard for anonymizing these data. Developers will likely have their own anonymizing function that they use for their actual data.
• The way the data are anonymized is very specific, in most cases the data are replaced by * instead of being outright removed.
• There are way more data that you might want to mask such as e-mails, ibans, credit card numbers, that cannot be generated by the method.

Suggested workaround

const data = faker.finance.iban(); // "DE31070946979005090431"
const maskedData = data.replace(/(?<=.{4})\w(?=.{2})/g, '*'); // "DE31****************31"

See also

• https://github.com/faker-js/faker/pull/2494

[ST-DDT]

On hold until after the release of v9.0 to give the community time to react to this suggestion and state whether they use the method, what for and how it could be made more useful.