Privacy and smart sharing

You practiced a paste filter. AI apps are convenient dumping grounds: whole contracts, medical PDFs, customer lists, API keys, kids’ school reports, screenshots of banking apps. Once text leaves your device, it may be stored, reviewed for safety, used to improve services (policy-dependent), or exposed in a breach. Smart sharing means you get help without handing over secrets you wouldn’t put on a shared office whiteboard.

A practical share/hide list:

Usually hide / never paste

• Passwords, one-time codes, API keys, private crypto seeds
• Full ID numbers, passport scans, card numbers, bank statements
• Client or patient data you’re not allowed to disclose
• Home address + schedule combos, kids’ full details, unpublished legal strategy

Often OK if scrubbed

• Vague problem statements (“customer churn letter, friendly tone”)
• Code with secrets removed and company names swapped to ACME
• Public info you’re rewriting (a blog draft you already plan to publish)

Ask first

• Work docs under NDA — use approved enterprise tools or don’t use public bots
• School rules on AI assistance

Technique: redact then prompt. Replace “Jane Doe, 14 Maple, SS#…” with “a client overdue on invoice #123.” Keep the structure; drop the identifiers.

• Before you hit send on a “summarize this PDF” ask — skim for secrets.
• Choosing tools at work — prefer ones your company blessed for sensitive data.
• Helping a friend use AI — teach redaction as the first habit, not the last.

Screenshots leak as much as text (QR codes, email sidebars, Slack DMs). “Incognito” browser mode doesn’t make the AI company’s servers forget. Also: pasting secrets into a “local-sounding” app still needs you to confirm where the bits actually go.

Take one real email or note you’d want help rewriting. Produce a redacted version in 2 minutes (fake names, no IDs). Paste only the scrubbed version into any AI you use.