Privacy and Pseudonymisation

Protect sensitive data before sending anything to cloud AI models.

How It Works

When using cloud API models, Foxhound automatically:

1. Replaces all email addresses and names with aliases (e.g. [email protected] becomes Person-A)
2. Sends only the pseudonymised text to the API
3. Restores real names in the returned analysis locally

The alias map is stored locally at data/alias_map.json and never sent to any API.

Managing Aliases

View the current alias map

uv run python pseudonymise.py --show

Pre-register a known identity

uv run python pseudonymise.py --add "Alice Smith" "[email protected]"

Reset all aliases

uv run python pseudonymise.py --reset

Privacy Tiers

Recommendations

• Default behaviour is safe — pseudonymisation is applied automatically for all cloud API calls
• Use --local for the most sensitive data — nothing leaves your machine
• Pre-register key individuals to ensure consistent alias mapping across sessions
• Review the alias map before sharing any analysis output with third parties
• The alias map itself is sensitive — it’s gitignored and stored only locally