Data traffic-light checker: check a document for personal data before you paste it into AI

Your team pastes customer emails, CVs and contracts into AI tools, and nobody checks what’s in them first. The data traffic-light checker skill marks every part of a document green, amber or red, tells you what to remove or replace, and can hand you a cleaned version with placeholders.

What it does

• Asks which AI tool and account you’ll use, what the task is, and whether your business has its own AI rule. Your own rules win where they differ.
• Treats amber as red when you’ll use a free or personal account. That is also the default if you don’t say.
• Uses three colours based on the categories of the Swiss Data Protection Act (nDSG):
  • Green: public information, your own texts with no names, anonymised examples, supplier documents with no personal data.
  • Amber: names, emails, phone numbers and addresses of customers, staff or contacts; orders linked to a named person; internal emails that mention people; job applications and CVs; contracts not under an NDA. Business account only, and only what the task needs.
  • Red: sensitive personal data such as health, religious or political views, criminal proceedings or social assistance; salaries and performance reviews; passwords, bank and card details, AHV numbers; anything under an NDA or professional secrecy.
• Lists every amber and red item with where it is (paragraph, line or heading) and a short hint, never the data itself: “line 4: a mobile number”.
• Gives an overall rating: the colour of the worst item, adjusted for your account.
• Checks whether the task needs each amber item, and suggests a fix for each one: remove it, or replace it with a placeholder such as [Customer A], [Employee B], [address] or [amount].
• Offers a cleaned version with every flagged item replaced, plus a list of the replacements and the new overall rating.
• Picks the stricter colour when an item could be either, and says why.
• Always flags Swiss identifiers: AHV numbers (756.xxxx.xxxx.xx), IBANs (CH..), Swiss phone numbers (+41 or 07x) and full postal addresses.

It only checks and suggests. It never sends or stores the document, and it never calls a document “safe” or “compliant”. It reports the colour under the rules.

When to use it

• Someone on your team asks “can I paste this into AI?”
• You want AI to summarise, translate or reply to a customer email, a contract or a CV, and want to check it for personal data first.
• You need an anonymised version of a document with names and addresses replaced.
• You’ve written a one-page AI rule for your team, as in the guide, and want it applied the same way every time.

To check what an AI tool itself does with your data, use the AI vendor privacy checker.