Before sharing an inquiry or chat history
Forwarding an inquiry to ask for advice or quoting a chat in a document can expose names and contact details that the recipient does not need. Before sharing text, hide personal and confidential information that is unnecessary for your purpose.
Safe to Share replaces selected text with a mask such as [MASK]. It is free,
requires no registration, and processes your text in your browser.
Example: hiding contact details and internal information in a support chat
This fictional chat concerns a blank screen. You can share the symptoms and troubleshooting steps without revealing the customer's name, phone number, customer ID, or an internal project name.
Original text (fictional example)
Customer: My name is Ichiro Sato. The admin page is completely blank. Customer: My customer ID is DEMO-5678, and my phone number is 000-0000-0000. Agent: Does the same thing happen after reloading? Customer: Yes. It still does not display anything. Internal note: Regarding Ichiro Sato's issue. Check with the team for project SAMPLE-BLUE.
Text prepared for sharing
Customer: My name is [MASK]. The admin page is completely blank. Customer: My customer ID is [MASK], and my phone number is [MASK]. Agent: Does the same thing happen after reloading? Customer: Yes. It still does not display anything. Internal note: Regarding [MASK]'s issue. Check with the team for project [MASK].
Keeping the “Customer” and “Agent” labels and the symptom description makes the conversation easy to follow. If the entire internal note is unnecessary, you can select and mask that whole line.
How to prepare text for sharing
- Paste the text into the tool and choose “Start editing.”
- Drag across names, phone numbers, customer IDs, or other text to hide. If “Hide selection” appears, use that button to confirm the selection.
- Select each occurrence of a name in internal notes or quoted text too. Anything you do not select remains unchanged.
- Check the replacement text and change it to something like
***if needed. The same replacement is used for every selected range. - Choose “Copy” or “Export text,” then review what you are about to share.
Personal information is not detected or redacted automatically. See the user guide for detailed steps and how to remove a selection.
Details that are easy to miss
- Names and email addresses repeated in signatures, recipients, and quoted messages.
- Inquiry numbers, order numbers, and identifiers in URLs that link to a particular customer or record.
- Confidential project names, business partners, or amounts in internal notes.
- Precise dates, locations, and affiliations that could identify someone when combined.
Hiding names alone may not be enough to protect someone's identity. Check both that the text still contains what the recipient needs and that unnecessary details have been removed from view.
What “removing personal information” means here
This tool creates a version for sharing with selected text hidden. It does not delete the original email or file, remove information already published online, or overwrite your original file.
An empty replacement field still uses [MASK]; it does not remove selected text by
replacing it with an empty string. Remaining context may still identify someone, so the result
is not guaranteed to be fully anonymous.
Copied text and exported files remain on your device. Check the pasted text or attached file to make sure you are sharing the redacted version. See About Safe to Share for details on processing your input.
Sharing text with an AI tool
When sending text to ChatGPT or another generative AI service, prepare a prompt containing only what is needed for the task. How to redact personal information before pasting into ChatGPT walks through an example of requesting a reply to a customer inquiry.