Privacy & Data Protection
Data residency
Data residency is where data is physically stored and processed. AI tools typically process prompts in the vendor's home cloud — often the US — unless an enterprise tier says otherwise.
Data residency is the geographic location of storage and processing. It matters because law follows geography: data in a US data center is realistically subject to US legal process, and some sectors and provinces set residency expectations for certain records.
Most consumer AI tiers offer no residency choice — prompts go where the vendor's infrastructure is. Enterprise tiers increasingly sell regional options (EU boundaries, in-country processing). For each tool, residency is a per-tier fact worth verifying, not a brand attribute.
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Sanitized AI inventories the AI tools in use and redacts sensitive data from prompts before it leaves.