AI safety and judgment, part 1: what never to paste

Some information must never go into an AI chat, some needs the names removed first, and most is fine. Learn the three buckets, and how the side panel changes them.

The three buckets

Everything you are about to give Gemini falls into one of three buckets.

Bucket	Meaning	Examples
Safe	No personal or secret data. Fine on any approved account	Public website text, a meeting agenda, your own draft with no customer names, sales totals by product
Redact first	Useful content mixed with personal details the task does not need	A customer complaint (remove name, address, phone), a job offer letter (remove salary and address), reviews with full names
Never	Regulated, secret, or harmful if leaked, and the task does not need it	Passwords and logins, card or bank numbers, health information, Social Security numbers, security codes, legal matters under privilege

The test for “never”: if this text appeared on a stranger’s screen, would someone be harmed, or would the company be in trouble with a regulator or a customer? If yes, it does not go in.

The three buckets with examples:

Three cards for the safe, redact first and never buckets, with examples of each and the test for never — Most work content is safe or redact first. The never bucket is short and absolute.

Personal information: redact first

Most work involves people, and Gemini can help with it. It almost never needs to know who. Swap names for roles (“the customer”, “Employee A”), remove phone numbers, emails and addresses, strip account numbers. The answer is just as good, and you put the names back afterwards.

Habits:

Paste into a Doc or notes app first, find-and-replace the name, then copy to Gemini.
Ask what Gemini actually needs. Often two paragraphs, not the whole thread.
On a phone, read the paste once before you send. Signatures and quoted replies carry a lot of personal detail.

How the side panel changes the picture

Gemini in Gmail or Docs on your Workspace account already has access to the email or document. There is no paste, and the data stays inside the company’s Workspace agreement. That is why most company policies prefer the side panel for customer content: redaction is less often needed, because nothing leaves the company’s system.

Two things still apply. The “never” bucket is still never: do not ask the side panel to do anything with a password, card number or health record even though it can see them. And the personal account version of Gemini is a different world: there the buckets apply in full and many policies forbid work content entirely.

Where the same email ends up, depending on the door and the account:

Two cards: with the Workspace side panel the email stays inside the company agreement; with a personal account the same email moves outside company control — Same email, two very different places for the data to go.

Passwords, payment and health: never

Three categories stay out on every account unless your company has set up an explicitly approved process:

Credentials: passwords, PINs, API keys, Wi-Fi codes, door codes, admin logins.
Payment data: card numbers, bank account and routing numbers, CVV codes, full statements.
Health data: diagnoses, doctor’s notes, medications, anything about a named person’s health.

If a task seems to need one of these, the task is wrong, not the rule. A payroll note about an absence does not need the diagnosis. New-hire instructions do not need the real password.

Try it now

Open your last five Gemini chats and the last five things you asked a side panel to do. Decide which bucket each one was in. If anything landed in “redact first” or “never”, delete the chat and note what you would do differently.

Remember: safe, redact first, never. Passwords, payment details and health information are always never. The Workspace side panel keeps data inside the company; a personal account does not.

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