explainer
What is a PII gateway?
A PII gateway is a control point between your systems and a large language model. It finds the personal data in what you send — names, national IDs, health and bank numbers, addresses, contact details — replaces each value with a token before the model provider receives it, and puts the real values back into the answer. OBVELO is a PII gateway hosted in the EU.
why a gateway
Why mask personal data before it reaches the LLM
Prompts, attachments and tool results carry the people your work is about: a customer in a ticket, a patient in a letter, an employee in a spreadsheet. Once a value has reached the model provider, nothing on your side can call it back. A gateway stands where that traffic already passes, so the value is replaced before it leaves.
one place
One control point for every path
Applications, agents, files and people in a chat window go through one engine and one set of rules. Masking stays on the gateway, so a fix there reaches every installation the same day.
context
The model keeps the context
A token rather than a black box: the sentence keeps its shape, so the model still reads who did what to whom — it just does not learn the name. The same value keeps the same token everywhere in the request.
audit
An audit trail without the content
Which account, which key, which tool, allowed or refused — never the content itself. It answers who sent this and who approved this.
redaction, anonymisation, pseudonymisation
PII redaction for LLMs, done as pseudonymisation
Three words are used for keeping personal data away from a model. They are not the same thing, and only one of them gives you the answer back with the real names in it.
redaction
The value is removed
A black box or a deleted word. The model does not learn the name — and nothing can put it back into the answer, so a reply drafted for the person no longer says who it is for.
anonymisation
Nobody can tell who it was
Not even you: there is nothing left to turn the text back into the document you sent. It suits statistics more than a letter you still have to send.
pseudonymisation
A token you can turn back
What OBVELO does. Each value becomes a token such as [Person 1]; you keep the mapping, so the answer comes back with the real values in place. Pseudonymisation, not anonymisation.
european by construction
What makes it a European PII gateway
- Hosted in the EU. Hosting and every sub-processor are in the EU or EEA, and every sub-processor is entered in our register of processing activities before it is used.
- Detection that cannot call out. The name model runs in a container that holds no network permission — not “does not use the network”, but cannot.
- Nothing from request content stored. The data plane stores nothing from request content; the control plane stores the account, the plan and usage in numbers, and never sees content. In a deployment in your own infrastructure, the gateway also keeps a content log for up to 30 days on your servers, encrypted with your key and readable only by your administrators; we never see it.
- No vault on our side. The mapping that turns tokens back into the real values travels with your request and stays with you.
- Your provider, your credentials. Traffic goes to your model provider on your own credentials. We do not call a model on our contract.
OBVELO lowers the personal data your model provider receives and gives you a control point with an audit trail. The detail is on the security page.
where it sits
Where a PII gateway fits in your AI stack
llm proxy
In front of the API you already call
OpenAI chat and responses, Anthropic messages, Gemini contents — Mistral and compatibility gateways speak the chat shape. Point your client at the gateway and add one header; streaming and tool calls included. Connect it.
sdk
In your own code
SDKs for TypeScript, Python and .NET wrap the model client you already use. Your provider key never reaches us, and the values come back in your process. The SDKs.
agents and mcp
Between an agent and its tools
Tool results are masked value by value; IDs, threads and cursors pass through, so the agent keeps working. A connector gives any MCP client tools that mask and restore. Agents and files.
browser
In the chat window
The browser add-on masks what a person types or pastes into an AI chat before it is sent, and puts the real names back into the answer on screen. The add-on.
files
Inside the attachment
With file masking on, a docx, xlsx, pptx, csv or txt comes back masked and still opens — authors and comments included. Files and attachments.
what it finds
PII detection across jurisdictions
668 detection rules in 19 categories find national, tax and social-security numbers, health and bank numbers, addresses and contact details across 52 jurisdictions, and a name model finds the people. Your own lists of people and companies travel with the request and are stored nowhere. For the documents a sector writes there are presets: see healthcare and public administration.
Personal data stays with you. The question goes to the model.
See it on the live gateway, or start free — the free plan needs no card.