---
doc_version: "1.0.0"
last_updated: "2026-07-14T15:00:57.718Z"
title: "How to Enable PII Redaction"
description: "Automatically detect and mask personally identifiable information in ChatbotIQ conversations: emails, phone numbers, credit card numbers, and more."
keywords: [PII redaction, privacy, data masking, personal information, GDPR, ChatbotIQ]
---

PII (Personally Identifiable Information) redaction automatically detects and masks sensitive information in chat messages. When a user types an email address, phone number, or credit card number, it's replaced with a placeholder before processing.

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## Enable PII redaction

1. Open your bot settings (gear icon in the Playground, or Edit on the Bots page).
2. Scroll to the **Privacy & Access** section.
3. Toggle **PII Redaction** to ON.
4. Save.

That's it. PII redaction is now active for all new messages to this bot.

---

## What gets redacted

When enabled, the following types of PII are detected and masked:

- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Credit card numbers
- Social security numbers
- IP addresses
- API keys
- Other common PII patterns

Redacted content is replaced with a placeholder (e.g., `[EMAIL REDACTED]`, `[PHONE REDACTED]`) in the copy of the message that is sent to the AI model and used for retrieval (RAG context). The original conversation record is stored unredacted, redaction applies only to what's sent to the AI model, not to the saved message history.

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## Test it

1. Open the Playground for your bot.
2. Type a message containing an email address (e.g., "My email is john@example.com").
3. The bot's response should reference the redacted version, not the original PII.

---

## When to use PII redaction

- **Customer-facing bots** where users might share personal information.
- **Compliance requirements** (GDPR, CCPA) that require minimizing PII storage.
- **Internal bots** where employees might paste sensitive data.

---

## Related

- [Bot Settings Reference](/reference/bot-settings/) - PII redaction setting
- [Security, Privacy, and GDPR](/explanation/security-and-privacy/) - broader privacy features

## Sitemap

Full documentation index: [sitemap.md](/sitemap.md) and [llms.txt](/llms.txt).