Guides: using AI without exposing personal data
How-to guides, comparisons, and foundations for using AI tools like ChatGPT with sensitive documents in a GDPR-safe way.
How-to guides
- How to anonymize a PDF: remove personal data automatically
How to anonymize a PDF locally on your device: personal data is detected, reviewed, and replaced with placeholders, including scanned PDFs via on-device text recognition.
- How to use ChatGPT with confidential data (a GDPR-safe workflow)
To use ChatGPT safely with client or patient data, remove personal data before the text ever leaves your device. Here is the secure four-step workflow.
- Using ChatGPT privately: why your personal data doesn't belong there either
Even for personal use, you shouldn't put personal data into ChatGPT and similar tools. Everything you paste is processed on someone else's servers. The safe way: remove personal details locally, before the text leaves your device.
For your profession
- AI for tax advisors: protecting client data
Tax advisors can use AI without breaching confidentiality by removing client data locally, before the text ever leaves the device.
- AI in healthcare: protecting patient data
Doctors and clinics can use AI without exposing health data by removing patient data locally, before the text ever leaves the device.
- Enabling AI across your company: a guide for data protection officers
Data protection officers can enable AI instead of banning it by removing personal data locally, before employees paste it into an AI tool.
- GDPR-safe AI for law firms
Lawyers can use AI tools like ChatGPT without breaching client confidentiality by removing client data locally, before the text ever leaves the device.
Comparisons
- All-in-one anonymizing AI chat vs. your own ChatGPT or Claude
An all-in-one AI chat with built-in anonymization is convenient, but it usually costs more, gives you only the raw model, and has to receive your original text first. Anonymizing locally and using your own AI keeps the full product, predictable cost, and your data on your machine.
- On-device vs cloud anonymization: the difference
With on-device anonymization, the document content never leaves your machine. Cloud services still transmit the data to someone else's server, even when hosted in Germany.
Benchmark
- How accurate is Stript's on-device PII detection? A benchmark
On our German and English benchmark, Stript's on-device pipeline reaches an F1 of 96.4 (English) and 96.8 (German), with 96 to 97% recall. Structured identifiers like emails, IBANs, and phone numbers are detected at 100%. A human confirms every detection.
Foundations
- Anonymization vs. pseudonymization (GDPR): the difference
Anonymization removes the link to a person irreversibly. Pseudonymization replaces identifying data with placeholders and stays reversible with separately held information. What that means for using AI.