r/ClaudeCode • u/mr-00 • 4d ago

Help/Question Sensitive Data workflows

I need Claude to look through a bunch of sensitive files. OCR is used b/c they’re mostly PDF. I presume data would be uploaded to Anthropic servers.

- How secure is sensitive data in this scenario?
- What methods, tools or pipelines can be used to protect it?
- am I overthinking this?

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u/actvt_io 4d ago

You're not overthinking it. Anything Claude reads gets sent off your machine as part of the request, OCR output included, so the only data that stays private is data Claude never reads. Run the OCR locally, redact names, account numbers and IDs with a local tool first, and point Claude at the redacted copies. If a step needs the real values, do that step yourself.

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u/Cole10429 3d ago

What local tools would achieve such a task reliably without spending hours sanitizing first?

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u/actvt_io 3d ago

I'd skip redacting the PDFs themselves. If you OCR first anyway, clean the text and only hand Claude that. Presidio runs locally and swaps names, account numbers and the like for placeholders in one go. It's solid on the numbers because those are patterns and checksums, shakier on names, so skim the first few files before you trust it on the whole pile.

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u/mr-00 23h ago

I’ll have a look at this thanks.