The problem
Many law firms, practices and insurance brokers already use ChatGPT, Copilot or Claude — for draft replies, summaries, wording. But client correspondence is full of names, addresses, IBANs, national register numbers and claim numbers. Those don’t belong in a cloud.
What Privatim does
Privatim runs as a small app on your Mac, with an icon in the menu bar. You select a text in any application and press ⌘⌥E. The review window shows the text with every detected detail highlighted in colour, together with a legend. You undo maskings that aren’t needed and add your own.
Then you copy the masked text to the clipboard or open Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Grok directly. Via the clipboard, any AI tool works, Copilot included. You copy the AI’s reply back and restore it from the menu bar menu or with a keyboard shortcut: the real names and details are back in place.
Two ways to mask
Placeholders: each detail is replaced with a typed placeholder
such as [Person_K7QX_1]. Unambiguous, and the AI can keep using it
in its reply.
Realistic replacement names: names, places and companies are replaced with realistic fictitious values that AI tools handle better. “Dr Schmitz”, for instance, becomes “Dr [Hauffer]”, and one street becomes another. Dates, amounts and identifiers remain placeholders.
What is detected
Detection works in three layers: patterns with check digits for numbers and identifiers, a language model for names, places and organisations, and a local privacy model. It knows the formats you deal with every day in Belgium and Luxembourg, in German, French, Dutch and English:
- Names
- Companies and organisations
- Places, streets, addresses
- Email and phone
- IBAN and BIC
- Structured payment references +++…+++
- Belgian national register numbers
- Luxembourg national identification numbers
- Belgian enterprise and VAT numbers
- Belgian licence plates
- Insurance numbers
- Usernames, hostnames, IP addresses
- Passwords and keys
No detection is complete. That is why Privatim shows every masking in the review window before anything leaves the building, and you have the final say.
More than the clipboard
- Glossary: terms that should always be masked, and terms that should never be masked, such as your own firm’s name.
- Documents: anonymise whole CSV files, emails and text files.
- Four languages: the app itself is available in German, French, Dutch and English.
Where your data stays
Privatim processes your text and documents only on your Mac. It sends neither content, nor the mapping between original values and placeholders, nor usage data to Euregio.Net AG or anyone else.
Privatim connects to the internet only when you download language models (from GitHub and Hugging Face, or a mirror you have set) or test the chatbots’ reachability in the system check. The chatbot buttons open the service in your browser; what you paste there is up to you.
System requirements
- Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later)
- macOS 13 Ventura or later
- Signed and notarised by Apple
Privatim Gateway In preparation
Detection on a server in your office or at your hosting provider: less powerful Macs get the full detection, and other systems can anonymise through the same place.
Become a tester
Privatim is in its testing phase. We are looking for SMEs, notaries, law firms, accountants, insurance brokers, medical practices and other organisations in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Euregio who work on a Mac and will tell us honestly what’s missing.
Or write directly to privatim@euregio.net.