Air-Gapped & Zero Data Collection

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 10, 2026 • Version 1.0.0

Executive Summary: PIIShield processes all documents entirely on your local workstation. We do not collect, transmit, store, or access any of your personal data, documents, or processing results. No internet connection is required or used for document processing.

1. About PIIShield

PIIShield ("the Application") is a native desktop application for Windows that detects and redacts personally identifiable information (PII) from documents and images. The Application is designed from the ground up to operate completely offline — all parsing, AI inference, optical character recognition, and redaction occur locally on your physical machine.

2. Data We Do NOT Collect

PIIShield does not collect, access, transmit, or store any of the following:

Your documents, images, text, spreadsheets, or any file contents you process.
The results of PII detection, redaction coordinates, or extracted metadata.
Personal information such as your name, email, credentials, or account details.
Usage analytics, telemetric pings, diagnostic reports, or crash logs.
Hardware identifiers, MAC addresses, IP addresses, or geographic location data.
Keystrokes, clipboard contents, or screen captures.

3. Local Data Storage

PIIShield stores the following operational data locally on your device to provide essential functionality:

Processing History: File names, file sizes, processing timestamps, and entity counts (stored in a local SQLite database in your Windows AppData folder). This data remains strictly on your hard drive.
Application Settings: Your redaction preferences, detection module selections, theme preferences, and custom rules (stored in local browser storage and the local database).
Custom Rules: Any keyword or regular expression patterns you define for custom PII detection.

You can clear your processing history at any time from within the Application. All local state files are saved under %APPDATA%\PIIShield\ and can be inspected or deleted by the user at will.

4. AI and Machine Learning Models

PIIShield utilizes locally bundled AI models for Named Entity Recognition (GLiNER via ONNX Runtime) and Optical Character Recognition (EasyOCR / PyTorch). These models execute entirely using your local CPU/GPU hardware. No prompts, text embeddings, or tokens are ever transmitted to external cloud APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or Azure).

5. Network Connectivity

PIIShield does not require an active internet connection for document processing, optical character recognition, or file export. Network activity is limited exclusively to:

Application Updates: If distributed through the Microsoft Store, application package updates are managed entirely by the Windows Store client service.

6. Third-Party Integrations

PIIShield does not integrate with, send data to, or receive telemetry from any third-party tracking services, analytics engines, or external cloud infrastructure.

7. Compliance & Regulatory Standards

Because PIIShield operates in an air-gapped, zero-egress architecture, utilizing the software does not constitute a third-party data transfer under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), or Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP).

8. Contact

If you have any questions or security inquiries regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact:

support@piishield.com