---
Title: "What Is PII Redaction? Definition and Examples"
Url: "https://computer.io/glossary/pii-redaction"
Topic: "Data and security"
Description: "PII redaction removes or masks personally identifiable information like names, emails and card numbers from text, logs or AI prompts. How and why to redact."
---

# What is PII redaction?

PII redaction is the process of detecting and removing or masking personally identifiable information, such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, ID numbers and card details, from documents, conversations, logs or AI prompts, to protect privacy and meet compliance requirements.

## Example

"My card 4111 1111 1111 1111 was charged" → "My card [CARD] was charged".

## Where to redact

| Place | Why |
| --- | --- |
| Support transcripts | Privacy |
| Logs | Security |
| AI prompts | Limit data exposure |
| Analytics exports | Compliance |

## Methods

Pattern matching, named-entity recognition models, and masking or tokenization.

## FAQ

### What counts as PII?

Any information that can identify a person, alone or combined.

### Is redaction the same as anonymization?

Redaction removes specific fields; anonymization makes data non-identifiable overall.

### Should PII be redacted before sending to an LLM?

Often yes, depending on the provider, contract and data policy.

## Related terms

- [AI governance](https://computer.io/glossary/ai-governance)
- [How do you protect customer data?](https://computer.io/answers/how-to-protect-customer-data)

## How Computer helps

- [How computer works](https://computer.io/how-computer-works)

## Further reading

- [Build enterprise ai agents](https://devrev.ai/blog/build-enterprise-ai-agents)