PII Redactor
Paste text or drop a file and strip out personal data before you share it, paste it into an AI, or file a bug report. Emails, phones, cards, SSNs, IPs and secrets are caught instantly, and a real AI model finds names, companies and places — all on your own device.
🔒 100% private — your text never leaves your browserHow it works
Everything happens locally. The structured data — emails, phone numbers, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, IP addresses and common API keys — is matched the instant you type, using carefully written patterns in plain JavaScript. Credit card candidates are confirmed with the Luhn checksum so random 16-digit numbers do not get flagged by mistake.
Names are the hard part, because there is no pattern for "this is a person." So when you turn on AI detection, the page loads a real named-entity-recognition transformer (a BERT model fine-tuned on the CoNLL-2003 task) compiled to run in your browser with Transformers.js and WebAssembly. It reads the text and labels people, organizations and locations. The model downloads once, is cached by your browser, and from then on it runs offline on your own machine. No text, and no file you drop in, is ever sent anywhere.
Why redact in the browser
The whole point of removing personal data is privacy, so uploading that data to someone else's server to clean it defeats the purpose. Doing it locally means you can scrub a customer email, a support log, or a database export before pasting it into ChatGPT or attaching it to a ticket, without that sensitive data touching the internet at all.
Pick a redaction style
Tags replace each match with a label like [EMAIL] or [NAME]. Consistent tags add a stable number so the same person stays "[NAME_1]" everywhere — useful when you want an AI to keep following who is who without learning their real identity. Blackout simply covers the text with blocks for a screenshot-ready result.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. Pattern matching is local JavaScript and the AI model runs in your browser via WebAssembly. Your text and any file you drop in never leave your device.
What does it detect?
Emails, phone numbers, credit cards (Luhn-verified), US SSNs, IP addresses and common secrets/API keys instantly. With AI detection on, also names, organizations and locations.
Why does the AI model need to download?
Running a real model locally means the weights have to live on your device. It is about 50 MB, downloads once, and your browser caches it so the next visit is instant and works offline.
Is detection perfect?
No automated redactor is. Patterns are high-precision but unusual formats can slip through, and the AI name model can miss or over-tag. Always review the redacted output before sharing anything sensitive.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes. The instant pattern detection works everywhere. The AI model also runs on mobile, just a little slower to load.
I build tools like this every day.
Senior full-stack engineer, available for senior or contract work, fully remote. See the rest of the lab or get in touch.