Separate Public, Fictional, Internal, and Sensitive Context

Unit ID: PAW-M03-U01 Estimated active time: 20-25 minutes

Four kinds of information

Not everything you could paste into an AI tool should be pasted into it.

It helps to sort information into four groups before you start:

• Public — already published. A price list on your website, a public timetable.
• Fictional — invented for practice. Placeholder names, made-up figures.
• Internal — not secret, not public. A draft agenda, an internal process note.
• Sensitive — personal, confidential, or regulated. Names with health details, salaries, unpublished results, customer records.

The line that matters most is between internal and sensitive.

Why the sort comes first

Once text is in a prompt, it has left your control. You may not know where it is stored, who can see it, or whether it is used for training.

Sorting first is quicker than deciding mid-task, and it is much quicker than explaining afterwards why a customer's details went into a chat window.

The substitution habit

Most sensitive context can be replaced rather than removed.

SUBSTITUTION TABLE

Real                          Use instead
---------------------------   ---------------------------
Priya Raman, 34, diabetic     Learner A, adult, one health condition
account 4471-8890             account NNNN-NNNN
£48,200 salary                a mid-band salary
Northfield Clinic             Clinic A
14 March incident report      an incident report from this quarter

The AI tool does not need the real name to draft a good letter. It needs to know that a person is being written to, and what about.

Fictional context must be labelled

If you invent details for practice, say so in the prompt:

> Draft a fictional reminder for a fictional workshop. Do not present any detail as real.

Without that line, invented practice output can be copied into real use by someone who did not know it was practice. Labelling it costs one sentence.

When substitution is not enough

Some work should not go near an AI tool at all, even substituted.

If re-identification is plausible — a small team, a rare condition, a single named site — then removing the name does not protect anyone. In those cases the answer is to do the work without the tool, or to ask a much narrower question that needs no case detail.

Module 11 returns to this as a workflow gate.

Mini practice

Take one document you would like help with.

Mark every line as public, fictional, internal or sensitive.

Then build a substitution table for the sensitive lines, and check whether the remaining text still supports the request.

Mark complete