Privacy & Data Protection
PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
PII is any information that identifies a person — names, emails, ID numbers, and combinations that single someone out. Most privacy law obligations attach to it.
Personally identifiable information is data that identifies an individual directly (name, email, SIN, account number) or in combination (postal code plus birthdate plus employer). Canadian law uses the broader term "personal information"; the operative question everywhere is whether a person can be singled out.
In AI usage, PII arrives casually — in pasted emails, exported spreadsheets, meeting transcripts — and each submission to an external tool is a disclosure under privacy law. Automated PII detection and redaction at the prompt is the control that scales with how often people paste.
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Sanitized AI inventories the AI tools in use and redacts sensitive data from prompts before it leaves.