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Lesson 6 · Beginner · 15 min

Before you paste a text: personal and confidential data

What Copilot Chat does with your prompts: no training, but logging and audit. One rule to decide what to paste, and how to anonymise.

By QDNA · Published on · Updated on

Goal
You will be able to decide in thirty seconds whether a text can be pasted into Copilot Chat, and to anonymise it when processing is allowed.
Skills
Check
A document held in front of a Copilot Chat window, its names and amounts masked by neutral labels before being pasted.
Illustration generated by AI

Your first attempt, unaided

Before reading, take an ordinary work document, open on your screen. List on a sheet of paper everything it contains that you would not accept seeing in an audit log your administrator can read.

In brief.

Copilot Chat protects your enterprise data: your prompts, the answers and the attached files are not used to train the models and are not shared with OpenAI. But they are logged, kept and can be consulted by your administrator. Before pasting a text, check its sensitivity label and your organisation's policy, then replace names and amounts with codes. Rule: paste only what you would email to an external contractor.

  1. 1What the protection covers, and what it does not

    Two questions hide behind "can I paste this text?". What Microsoft guarantees, first. What your organisation allows, next. Enterprise data protection, shown by the green shield, applies as soon as you are signed in with your work account. The administrator has nothing to switch on. It covers encryption and isolation between organisations. It also covers compliance with the GDPR, the European regulation on personal data, and with sensitivity labels. Finally, it carries the commitment not to use your prompts and answers to train the models.

    What this protection does not do: erase your traces. According to Microsoft's documentation, prompts and answers are logged. They are kept in Exchange, your organisation's mail service, for audit and content search. Your administrator can consult them. Retention policies, that is, the keeping periods set by your organisation, apply, including to a temporary conversation. Attached files are stored in your work OneDrive, where you can delete them. Finally, a shared conversation, a Page or a screenshot can carry a text beyond its perimeter.

    The second question depends on you. Two families of content call for a stop before pasting. Personal data, first: anything that identifies a person, name, email, employee ID, bank details, health, appraisal. Confidential data next: contracts, prices, strategy, classified documents. The test fits in one sentence: could I email this text to an external contractor? If yes, paste. If not, anonymise when processing is allowed; otherwise, do not use Copilot Chat for this task.

    Anonymising means removing what identifies without removing what is useful. Replace names with a job title or initials. Replace clients and suppliers with "Client A", employee IDs with codes, sensitive amounts with an order of magnitude. Paste only the useful part of the document. Then add a constraint in the prompt: the "Respect confidentiality and anonymise" booster asks Copilot to reproduce no named data in its answer.

    Item Replace with
    A person's name Their job title or initials
    A client's or supplier's name "Client A", "Supplier B"
    Employee ID, case number, bank details, email A neutral code, or nothing
    Sensitive amount An order of magnitude, or "[amount]"
    Health, family situation, opinions Removed, unless explicitly needed and authorised
    Diagram "Before pasting text into Copilot: three questions": Personal data? (name, e-mail, health, salary); Confidential data? (contract, pricing, trade secret); A sensitive decision? (HR, legal, medical); Anonymise or do not use Copilot; Go ahead, then verify the answer; None of the three?. Note: Copilot Chat protects your company data, but your organisation's policy always prevailsDiagram "Before pasting text into Copilot: three questions": Personal data? (name, e-mail, health, salary); Confidential data? (contract, pricing, trade secret); A sensitive decision? (HR, legal, medical); Anonymise or do not use Copilot; Go ahead, then verify the answer; None of the three?. Note: Copilot Chat protects your company data, but your organisation's policy always prevails
    Diagram "Before pasting text into Copilot: three questions"Diagram generated by AI and reviewed

  2. 2A formal warning prepared without any name

    A manager receives an email from HR about an employee's repeated lateness. He wants to prepare a corrective meeting.

    Weak prompt.

    Prepare a corrective meeting from this email.

    followed by the email pasted as is, with the name, the employee ID and a sentence about the employee's health. The outline obtained is fine. But those three pieces of data are now logged and consultable. And the outline picks up the medical reason, which has no place in the meeting.

    Strong prompt. The manager anonymises first: "S" replaces the name, the employee ID and the medical sentence disappear.

    Prepare a four-part outline for a corrective meeting. Context: four late arrivals in two months, documented facts, employee referred to as "S". Constraints: mention no personal or health-related reason, stick to the facts and the labour law framework, factual tone. Respect confidentiality: reproduce no named data in your answer. Facts:

    followed by the anonymised facts. The outline comes out in four parts, factual, without personal data, ready to use.

    What changes.

    • The text was anonymised before being pasted: the log contains no named data.
    • The confidentiality constraint is in the prompt: the answer does not reintroduce any.
    • The scope is bounded, facts and labour law: what is out of scope enters neither the tool nor the meeting.

  3. 3Anonymise ten complaints before pasting them

    For the exercise, write a fictional export of ten customer complaints, with names, email addresses, order numbers and amounts. Here is the starting prompt, to be improved:

    "Summarise these complaints and suggest a template reply."

    Before pasting, anonymise. Write "Client 1" to "Client 10", remove the email addresses, replace order numbers by codes. Keep the amounts only if they serve the summary. Add the confidentiality rule in the Constraints field, then enable the "Respect confidentiality and anonymise" booster. Run it, and check that the answer reintroduces none of the removed data and remains usable. The composer below guides you.

    Self-assessment grid: (a) no name, email address or number in the pasted text; (b) the prompt contains the confidentiality constraint; (c) the answer remains usable without the removed data.

    Open the prompt composer

  4. 4The hidden column Copilot reads anyway

    An executive assistant attaches the quarter's expense claims, exported from Excel, to Copilot Chat. She wants a summary by department. The visible sheet shows nothing but amounts per department. But a hidden column holds names and employee numbers. And a forgotten second tab lists absence reasons, two of them medical. What she should have seen: Copilot reads the whole file, including what the screen does not show. Anonymisation therefore applies to an attached file just as it does to pasted text. Microsoft's FAQ states that an uploaded file is stored in your OneDrive and is not used to train the model. It is still logged and can be shared. Correction: duplicate the workbook, then unhide and delete the hidden columns and the unused tabs. Replace each person with a code. Keep only the columns you need: department, category, amount, date. Add to the prompt: "The attached file is anonymised; do not try to identify people and do not reproduce any individual code in your answer." Delete the file from OneDrive once you are done. Rule to remember: clean an attached file the way you clean pasted text, hidden columns and extra tabs included.

  5. 5Quiz

    Three questions, instant feedback. Each option comes with an explanation.

    1. What happens to your prompts and the answers in Copilot Chat?

    2. An HR officer wants twelve annual review reports rephrased. What is the right approach?

    3. According to the checking lesson, what is a numbered statement without an opened link?

  6. 6Proof of mastery

    Take a text from your job containing personal data, or a fictional text you write for the exercise. Paste its anonymised version, the prompt with its confidentiality constraints, and the answer you obtained.

    Beginner badgeThis lesson counts towards the Beginner badgeSee the four badges

    Criteria

Going further

Reread Copilot Chat: what is included for the green shield and the tool's perimeter, then Checking an answer for the proofreading reflex. The Human resources sheet applies anonymisation to job-specific prompts, and the glossary defines enterprise data protection.

Frequently asked questions

Are my prompts used to train the model?

No. Enterprise data protection guarantees that your prompts, the answers and the attached files are not used to train the foundation models, and that they are not shared with OpenAI. They are, however, logged.

Who can read my conversations?

According to Microsoft, prompts and answers are logged and kept in Exchange for audit and content search. Your administrator can consult them with the audit tools, and your organisation's retention policies apply, including to a temporary conversation.

What happens to the files I attach?

They are stored in your work OneDrive, where you can delete them at any time. They are not used to train the models. Delete them once the task is done if the document is sensitive.

And the queries sent to the web?

The queries generated for Bing follow a separate regime: a few words with no user or organisation identifier, the full prompt is not passed on, but they leave the EU data boundary. Avoid client or project names in a question that will trigger a web search.

Sources