PII Cleanser

Modified on Sat, 22 Aug at 4:01 PM

What this is

When you use AI in trustMinder (comment summaries, AI reports, or data chat), we send a copy of open-ended comments to the AI provider.

Before that copy is sent, we look for personal information that a respondent may have typed into a comment (a name, email address, phone number, and similar). Anything we recognise is masked so the full value is not sent to the model.

Your stored survey comments are never changed. Masking only applies to the copy used for AI.

What you will see in AI answers

Masked values appear as short labels, for example:

[person We…y] for a first name such as Wendy
[agent Ph…p] when the name sits next to a word like “agent”
[email ja…e] for an email address

The first letters are kept so the AI can still say “the same person was mentioned several times”, without seeing the full name. Please treat these labels as redacted — do not try to guess the original value.

Name masking is best-effort. Unusual spellings, nicknames, or names that look like places may still appear. You can add extra names for your account (see below).

What we cleanse automatically

These checks run for every account (unless trustMinder has turned the cleanser off for the platform).

Type	What we look for	Example
Email	An email address	jane.doe@hospital.ie → `[email ja…e]`
Phone	Irish or UK-style numbers (at least 9 digits)	087 123 4567 or +353 1 234 5678
IBAN	International bank account numbers	IE29 AIBK 9311 5212 3456 78
Date of birth	A date next to words such as born, DOB, or birthday. Ordinary visit dates are left alone.	born on 12/03/1984
Payment card	13–19 digit card numbers that pass a standard checksum (so random long numbers are not treated as cards)	4111 1111 1111 1111
PPS	Irish PPS numbers	1234567T
NI number	UK National Insurance numbers	QQ 12 34 56 C
Eircode	Irish postcodes	D02 AF30
Street address	A house number plus a street name ending in Street, Road, Avenue, and similar	12 Main Street
Names	Common first names, plus names after phrases such as “my name is”, “spoke to”, or “agent”	Wendy → `[person We…y]`

Words that are not people (for example month names, “Great”, or place names like Dublin) are not treated as names.

Add names or IDs that are specific to you

If respondents often mention a staff first name we do not catch, or a client-specific ID (for example a policy number), you can add those on your profile. They only apply when your account’s data is sent to AI.

Go to My Profile.
Open the AI tab.
Select PII cleanser.
Under Your extras:
- Extra given names — type a name and press Enter. Capitalised mentions of that name will be masked. Add one name at a time (for example Siobhán or a short staff name we missed).
- Extra patterns (optional) — for structured IDs such as a policy number. Give the pattern a name, a short type label (for example POLICY), and a regular expression that matches the ID. If you are not comfortable with regular expressions, ask your trustMinder contact to help, or only use extra given names.
Click Save.

Analysts on your account: extras on the main account still apply to AI that uses that account’s survey data. You can also add extras on your own profile; those apply when you run AI.

What this does not do

It does not edit or delete comments in Insights, exports, or the original response.
It does not mask every possible personal detail (for example a rare nickname, or a name that is also a country).
It does not replace your own data-retention or privacy process for how long you keep survey answers.

If something is still appearing in AI output that you believe should be masked, add it under Extra given names or Extra patterns, then run the same AI question again.