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Anonymization: Protecting Personal Data

Anonymization removes personal data from your messages before they reach the AI model: how it works and how to control it.

Written by Thore Dücker

Anonymization automatically removes personal data from your messages before they go to the AI model. Sensitive information never leaves Beyond Chat in plain text, but you still see your original message in the chat.

How anonymization works

Beyond Chat automatically detects personal data in your message and replaces it with placeholders before the message goes to the language model. When the answer comes back, the placeholders are replaced with the original data again. For you, the chat looks completely normal, but the model never gets to see the sensitive data.

Important: Anonymization applies to your prompts and attached documents, but not to images.

Which data is detected

  • People: names, initials, pseudonyms

  • Addresses: street, house number, postal code, city

  • Contact details: email addresses, phone and fax numbers

  • URLs and IP addresses

  • Personal details: dates of birth and similar information

  • Account data: IBANs, credit card numbers, tax IDs, social security numbers

  • Credentials: API keys, passwords, tokens

The anonymization preview

As you type, Beyond Chat highlights detected data in real time. In the preview you see exactly what will be anonymized, and you decide for each entry:

  • Release: deliberately exclude individual entries from anonymization, for example a company name, while emails and IBANs stay anonymized

  • Add: manually mark additional passages that should be anonymized

By default, everything stays anonymized; releasing an entry is always a deliberate individual action. Within the same chat, Beyond Chat remembers entries you have already released; you can revoke any release at any time. In the chat history, each message is marked to show whether it was fully anonymized, partially released or sent in plain text.

Turning anonymization on and off

Whether and how you can control anonymization depends on your permissions:

  • Admins turn anonymization on or off company-wide and use group permissions to grant the right to control the filter

  • Users with this right see a shield icon in the chat and can use it to turn the filter off per chat or release individual data

  • Users without this right always work with the filter active

Tip: Turning it off applies only to the current chat. When you start a new chat, anonymization is automatically active again.

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