What Not to Paste

Four tiers, and the first is absolute. Never paste credentials: passwords, keys, recovery codes, account or card numbers, government identifiers. No task requires it, not even checking a password's strength.

Second, redact before pasting anything about another person. A model does not need a name, an address or a case number to help you with the language of a document. Strip them.

Third, check the policy before pasting anything belonging to an employer or a client. Consumer tiers and business tiers differ. Consumer conversations may be retained and, unless you have turned it off, used to improve models; enterprise and API arrangements generally carry contractual commitments not to.

Your obligation runs to the owner of the material, not to the convenience of the tool. In 2023 employees at a large electronics manufacturer pasted confidential source code and internal meeting notes into a consumer chatbot; the company banned generative SI on its network shortly afterward.

Fourth, assume readability. Text you paste may be retained, may be reviewed by a human for safety, and may be subject to legal process. The working test is simple and it is not about the vendor: would you email this to a stranger who is competent, well-intentioned, and keeps everything?