How to Remove PII From Text Before Sharing

Quick answer

Use this guide before sharing notes, ticket text, chat messages, copied errors, or customer snippets. The goal is to hide personal details while keeping the message useful.

Who this is for

• Support agents preparing customer notes
• Developers pasting text into AI tools
• QA teams writing public bug reports
• Operations teams sharing incident notes

What to remove or avoid

• Email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and account identifiers
• Customer names, tenant names, internal workspace names, and private links
• Any detail that identifies a person, customer, or private environment

What to keep visible

• The problem statement
• Safe timestamps, status codes, and plain error text
• Non-sensitive workflow steps
• Readable placeholders such as [EMAIL], [PHONE], and [IP_ADDRESS]

Useful controls in the tool

• Paste the text and let the redactor replace common PII.
• Use custom fields for names or tenant values unique to your team.
• Review the output before copying.
• Clear input when you are done.

Step-by-step

1. 1Paste the text into the tool.
2. 2Review the redacted result.
3. 3Add custom fields for names or private labels the tool should remember.
4. 4Copy the cleaned text into the destination.
5. 5Clear the workspace when finished.

Example

Before:
Customer jane@example.com called from +1 415 555 0198. Source IP: 203.0.113.42.

After:
Customer [EMAIL] called from [PHONE]. Source IP: [IP_ADDRESS].

What to do after review

• Do not paste the original customer text into public places.
• Keep only the details needed to explain the issue.
• Use custom fields for repeated customer or tenant names.

Tip: PII redaction works best when the cleaned text still explains the issue without identifying the person.