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[ARTICLE · art-109994] src=dataanonymiser.com ↗ pub= topic=ai-tools verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Local Personally Identifiable Information Anonymization

DataAnonymiser, a desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux, lets users redact personal and confidential information from text, PDFs, Office documents, and images before pasting them into AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot, with all processing done locally and no data uploaded. The tool replaces sensitive values with consistent placeholders, offers reverse anonymization, and includes a benchmark suite; users who find a missed item can earn two free weeks.

read5 min views5 publishedAug 25, 2026
Local Personally Identifiable Information Anonymization
Image: source

AT WORK

Let your team use AI without handing over customer data

Take out names, ID numbers, health details, financial data and confidential project words before anyone pastes a document into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or another AI tool.

DataAnonymiser redacts personal and confidential information from text, PDFs, Office documents and images on your device. Replace sensitive values with consistent placeholders before using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or another AI tool.

Windows, macOS and Linux · Nothing charged today · No tool catches everything, so check the result before you share

Nothing is uploaded

Not your file, not the text inside it. Other desktop tools send that to a server.

Works with the internet off

Once it is activated, disconnect and it still works. That is the test.

We never see what you write

Crash reports are switched off by default and never contain your content.

Reverse anonymisation

The list of what was replaced stays on your computer, for the current session only.

A full example

The AI works with placeholders and hands them back untouched. One step on your computer turns them into the real names and numbers again.

Three ways to use it

Most tools like this do one of these three things. All three run on your own computer.

Drop in text, code, PDFs, Word and Excel files, screenshots or photos. The same detail gets the same placeholder everywhere in the document, you can add your own confidential words, and you get a warning about anything that still looks sensitive before you copy.

Warns you when you type personal details into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Gmail or Outlook, and cleans up any text you select on any page — using the app on your own computer to do the work.

Point it at a folder and it tells you which files hold personal data and what kind. The report says what was found — never the details themselves, the text of your documents or where the files are.

Who it is for

For people at work, for compliance teams, and for anyone who wants AI help with something personal. AT WORK

Take out names, ID numbers, health details, financial data and confidential project words before anyone pastes a document into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or another AI tool.

FOR COMPLIANCE Strip out identifying details before information reaches support tools, log files, analytics, training data or an outside supplier.

ON YOUR OWN

Ask about a contract, a letter from your doctor, a bank statement or a private message — without handing over the names, numbers and addresses in it.

Benchmark performance

Every figure below comes from our established benchmark suite. The same documents, scored the same way, for every tool.

Personal data found

higher is betterFalse alarms

lower is betterFind a miss, get two weeks

Those numbers are the ones we publish. If you find wording where the app misses something it should have caught, send us the example, and every one we confirm earns two free weeks.

Swap every real name and number for a made-up one. Never send us real personal data, we do not want it.

Paste the text that came out badly, keeping the wording that caused it. A person reads every one.

If it is a genuine miss we have not seen before, we add 14 days to your plan and email you to say so. Open to anyone on a trial or a paid plan. One reward per confirmed example. Sending the same text again with different fake names does not count.

Your device

None of this ever leaves your computer

What crosses the line

Finding the details, replacing them and putting them back all happen on your own computer. We do not add another company in the middle that gets to see your documents.

Frequently asked questions

What stays on your computer, what the app can and cannot catch, and what this does and does not mean legally.

No. Finding the personal details, replacing them and putting them back all happen on your own machine. Your documents are not sent to us or to any other service to be checked or cleaned up.

Yes, and with any other tool that accepts text. You clean the text up on your computer, paste the safe version into whichever AI tool you like, and put the real details back afterwards — again on your computer.

It keeps a short list of what was replaced with what, on your computer, for as long as you are working on that piece of text. When you finish, the list is gone — so it cannot be used later, by us or by anyone else.

Names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, ID and passport numbers, bank and card details and health information — in text and in images. No tool catches everything, so please read the result before you share anything sensitive.

No. It is a paid product and the source is not public. You can still check the promise yourself, though: once the app is activated, disconnect from the internet and it keeps working. You can also watch it with your own firewall or network monitor and see that nothing goes out.

Not on its own. Because you can put the real details back, lawyers and regulators usually call this pseudonymisation rather than true anonymisation — the link to the person still exists, it is just kept separately on your device. It is a strong way to share less personal data, but it does not by itself make you GDPR compliant.

Privacy that stays on your device

Try it free for 7 days, or talk to us about setting it up for your whole team.

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