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Text Anonymizer — Remove Personal Information from Text

Free text anonymizer: remove names, emails, phone numbers, API keys and other personal data before pasting text into ChatGPT or anywhere else — 100% in your browser, reversible with numbered tags.

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What is the Text Anonymizer?

Paste any text — an email thread, a support-ticket log, a student report, a server log — and this free text anonymizer strips the personal information out of it before you share it. Emails, phone numbers, credit cards, IP addresses, API keys and other structured data are detected automatically; the names and project words only you can know go on your watch list, and the tool hunts down their variations for you. Everything runs in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and the input text is never even written to disk.

Anonymize Text Before Pasting It into ChatGPT or Any AI

The most common reason to anonymize text online in 2026 is AI: you want a model like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to summarize a customer thread or debug a log, but company policy — or common sense — says customer names, emails and keys must not cross the wire. The workflow here is built for exactly that round trip:

  1. Scan the text and review every finding in context.
  2. Anonymize with numbered tags — the same person is always [NAME-1], so the AI can still follow who did what.
  3. Paste the anonymized text into the AI.
  4. Paste the AI’s answer back into the Restore panel — every placeholder swaps back to the original, using the mapping that never left your device.

Why a Watch List Beats “Magic” Name Detection

Tools that promise to automatically remove personal information from text quietly fail on the hardest part: names. No pattern can tell “Mr. Baker” from a baker. Instead of guessing, you tell the tool which names and terms you expect, and it does the tedious part — matching JOHN, John’s, José vs Jose, first and last names separately, and optionally near-misspellings — then shows you every hit for confirmation before anything is replaced. You stay in control; nothing is removed that you didn’t approve.

What Gets Detected Automatically

The automatic detectors cover the structured identifiers a PII scrubber is expected to catch — with real validation (card numbers are Luhn-checked, IBANs are mod-97 checked, IP octets are range-checked) so random digit runs don’t get flagged:

Automatic detectors, their placeholders, and a sample catch

DetectsPlaceholderExample it catches
Email addresses[EMAIL-1]jane.doe@example.com
Phone numbers[PHONE-1](555) 123-4567
Social Security numbers[SSN-1]219-09-9999
Credit card numbers[CARD-1]4111 1111 1111 1111
IP addresses[IP-1]192.168.1.254
Web addresses (URLs)[URL-1]https://internal.example.com/report
API keys & tokens[KEY-1]sk-proj-Ab12Cd34Ef56Gh78Ij90
IBANs (bank accounts)[IBAN-1]DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00
@handles[HANDLE-1]@jane_doe
Likely first names[PERSON-1]Izabela

Every example in this table is verified against the live detection engine by an automated test — the table cannot drift from real behavior.

Private by Architecture, Not by Promise

Most online redaction tools upload your text to a server to process it — which defeats the purpose. This one is different by construction: detection and replacement are plain JavaScript running on your machine, so it works on confidential material by default. It also refuses to keep secrets it doesn’t need: your input text and the tag mapping live only in the page unless you explicitly opt in to remembering the mapping for a later restore. Pair it with the word counter to check length before sending, the case converter to clean up formatting, or the cipher encoder when you want to encode rather than redact.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it safe to paste sensitive data into ChatGPT or other AI chatbots?

Treat anything you paste into a hosted AI chatbot as leaving your control — it crosses the network and may be logged or used to improve the service depending on your settings and plan. The safe workflow is to anonymize first: replace names, emails, numbers and keys with neutral placeholders here, paste the anonymized version into the AI, then restore the originals in the answer with the mapping this tool keeps on your device.

Does this text anonymizer upload my text?

No. Detection, replacement and restoring all run as JavaScript in your browser — the text never leaves your device. We deliberately do not even save the input text or the tag mapping to browser storage unless you switch "Remember mapping" on; only your watch-list terms and settings persist.

Can it automatically find people’s names?

Partly — and we are honest about the limits. A built-in list of hundreds of common international first names (Izabela, José, Kristy…) flags likely names automatically when they appear capitalized. For surnames, unusual names, and internal project words you add terms yourself — or simply click a word in the preview — and the tool then also catches casing variants, possessives like "John's", accented spellings, each word separately, initial forms like "S. Lans", names glued to other words by a lost line break, and — optionally — close misspellings.

How do I get the original names back after anonymizing?

Use numbered-tag mode. Every entity gets a consistent placeholder ([NAME-1], [EMAIL-2]) and the tag↔original mapping stays on your device. Paste the AI's reply into the Restore panel and every placeholder switches back to the real value. The same entity always gets the same number, so the meaning of the text survives the round trip.

What personal information does it detect automatically?

Email addresses, phone numbers in international and US formats (including single-digit-group formats like +31 6 12345678), US Social Security numbers, credit card numbers (checksum-verified so random digits are not flagged), IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, URLs, @handles, IBANs (checksum-verified), developer secrets such as OpenAI/Stripe-style keys, AWS access keys, GitHub tokens, Slack tokens, Google API keys and JWTs — plus likely first names, matched against a built-in list of hundreds of common international given names and their spelling variants.

Can I review what will be removed before it happens?

Yes — nothing is replaced without your say. The review step highlights every finding in context; click any highlight to keep or skip that one occurrence, use the grouped list to include or exclude a whole entity, and click any missed word (or select a phrase) to add it to the watch list on the spot. Your watch list is saved in your browser and can be exported and imported as a file, so a team can share one names list.

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