Why every AI integration needs PII redaction and how to implement it in 60 seconds
The AI Privacy Problem Nobody Talks About
You're building a ChatGPT wrapper or any other AI wrapper. Users submit questions.
Those questions contain:
- Emails
- Phone numbers
- Social security numbers (yes, really)
- Credit card numbers (users paste them)
- Home addresses
All of it goes directly to OpenAI's servers.
Question: Does your privacy policy say "We share user data with third parties"?
Probably not. But you just did.
The Lawsuit Waiting to Happen
GDPR fines in 2024: €2.1 billion
Average data breach lawsuit settlement: $3.8 million
SEC now requires disclosure of AI related data handling.
It's not paranoia. It's risk management.
The Simple Fix
Redact PII before sending to the LLM.
User Input: "My SSN is 123-45-6789 and email is john@company.com"
↓
PII Firewall Edge
↓
Clean Input: "My SSN is [SSN] and email is [EMAIL]"
↓
Send to ChatGPT
ChatGPT never sees the actual PII. Your liability drops to near zero.
Implementation (60 seconds)
Step 1: Get API Key
Sign up on RapidAPI (free tier available)
Step 2: Call Before LLM
async function sanitizeForLLM(userInput) {
const response = await fetch(
'https://pii-firewall-edge.p.rapidapi.com/v1/redact/fast',
{
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
'X-RapidAPI-Key': process.env.RAPIDAPI_KEY
},
body: JSON.stringify({ text: userInput })
}
);
const { redacted } = await response.json();
return redacted;
}
// Usage
const cleanInput = await sanitizeForLLM(userMessage);
const aiResponse = await openai.chat.completions.create({
messages: [{ role: 'user', content: cleanInput }]
});
Step 3: There is no Step 3
Seriously. That's it.
What Gets Detected
| Category | Types | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Contact Info | Email, Phone | john@test.com, 555-1234 |
| Government IDs | SSN, Passport | 123-45-6789, AB1234567 |
| Financial | Credit Card, IBAN | 4111-1111-1111-1111 |
| Healthcare | NPI, Medicare | 1234567890 |
| Developer | API Keys | sk_live_xxx, ghp_xxx |
Total: 152 PII types across 50+ countries.
Why Not Build It Yourself?
I tried. Here's what happened:
Week 1: Basic regex for SSN and email. "This is easy!"
Week 2: User submits Indian Aadhaar number. Regex fails. We used dictionary lookups and proximity patterns, not just regex
Week 3: Added 15 more patterns. Performance tanked.
Week 4: Discovered Luhn checksum. Realized I was matching fake credit cards.
Month 2: Still finding edge cases (international phone formats, API keys, crypto addresses...)
Month 8: Finally production-ready. 2,000+ lines of code. 30+ checksum validators.
You can spend 8+ months on this and then few more months in implementing enterprise grade security and then optimizing algorithms for performance
Or use PII Firewall Edge API and ship today.
Performance
| Endpoint | Latency | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
/fast |
2-5ms | Logs, real-time |
/deep |
5-15ms | Context-heavy data (Addresses, Names) |
The Zero-AI Advantage
"Privacy" APIs that use ML models to detect PII:
Your Data → Their AI Server → Model Training → ???
PII Firewall Edge:
Your Data → Cloudflare Edge → Regex + Checksums → Deleted
No AI. No logs. No training. No liability.
We run on stateless Cloudflare Workers. No database is connected to the processing pipeline. The code is ephemeral.
Pricing Reality
| Provider | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| AWS Comprehend | $250+ |
| Google DLP | $200+ |
| Private AI | $500+ |
| PII Firewall Edge | $5 |
Same security. 97% less cost.
Get Started
Free: 500 requests/month
Pro: $5/month (5,000 requests/month)
curl -X POST "https://pii-firewall-edge.p.rapidapi.com/v1/redact/fast" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
-d '{"text": "test@example.com 123-45-6789"}'
Try it for free - PII Firewall Edge
SDK Docs - PII Firewall Edge - SDKs
Building AI features? Don't leak user data. Start protecting your users today.
Top comments (12)
We loved your post so we shared it on social.
Keep up the great work!
Wow, thank you for featuring my article! ❤️
Super grateful to the DEV community for amplifying this important topic. Redacting PII before it hits any LLM is becoming essential.
Hope it helps lots of devs build safer AI flows!
Totally relatable. I saw one of my colleague simply copy pasting complete error logs directly to Chatgpt without even a second thought to get immediate solution to the issue and thereby giving away lot of sensitive user info logged.
Exactly ! This is the core of the issue we are trying to address.
Ubiquitous problem. Brilliant business proposition!
Thank you so much! 🙏
PII leaking into LLM providers is a silent risk that most teams only discover after it's too late. Glad this resonated with you. If you ever try the API, I'd love to hear your feedback!
Looks like a important problem to solve! I wonder if a visual side by side input vs output might help website visitors visualize your product.
It's actually live here - See PII detection in action where you can see the demo which actually runs in the browser
We tried it and started using it in our workflow. So far it has been good in redacting the PII. Much needed one with all the AI chaos going on everywhere
Much needed feedback. Thanks for sharing.
The project is great, honestly. Great value with developer friendly pricing. Will definitely try it.
Thanks. You won't regret the decision. Open to feedback !