Nobody is trying to leak anything
That is precisely why it keeps happening. The person pasting a customer contract into a chatbot is not careless — they are trying to finish something before they go home. Helpfulness is the delivery mechanism.
So a policy built on warnings fails. People do not ignore it out of defiance; they ignore it because at 4pm the warning is abstract and the deadline is not. A policy works when following it is faster than not following it.
Write the rule for the person in a hurry. That is the only person who will ever break it.
What we are protecting
Not secrets, mostly. It is your customers' details, your prices, and anything you signed an agreement about. That is the stuff that turns an accident into a phone call from a lawyer.
The four lines
This is the policy. Everything after this page just explains it.
These tools, and no others
Name three. Anything else needs a two-minute conversation first.
Strip the details
Names, addresses, prices and contracts come out before anything is pasted.
Business account, always
Never a personal login. It decides who owns what gets typed.
The email test
If it would hurt in an email sent to the wrong person, it does not go in.
Line 4 is the whole policy. The first three exist to make line 4 easy to obey — because a rule that requires judgement at 4pm is a rule that gets skipped.
If it does not fit on one page, nobody will read it twice.
What to strip, and what to keep
The goal is not to stop your team using AI. It is to let them paste the shape of the problem without the identity of the people in it.
| Take it out | Leave it in |
|---|---|
| Customer and staff names | «the customer», «the technician» |
| Addresses and phone numbers | «north side of the city» |
| Exact prices under agreement | «a mid-range quote» |
| Contract and NDA text | A description of the clause that worries you |
| Card, bank and ID numbers | Nothing. These never go in, in any form. |
Redacting takes about fifteen seconds and the answer you get back is just as good. The model was never helping you because it knew the customer's name.
Why the account type matters
This is the part most small businesses have never been told, and it is the cheapest thing on the list to fix.
- A personal free account often allows your text to be used to improve the model
- A business account usually does not, and says so in writing
- If someone leaves, a personal account leaves with them — along with the history
- Only a business account gives you any record of what was actually shared
It is normally a small monthly cost per person. Compare that with one conversation explaining to a client why their contract went through somebody's personal chatbot login.
62%
of people working with AI put security at the top of their worry list — and most have written no rules at all
Putting it in place this week
Monday
Choose your three tools. Write the four lines on one page.
Tuesday
Move everyone onto business accounts. Fifteen minutes.
Wednesday
Ten-minute team talk. Read the four lines out. Answer questions.
Ongoing
Add it to onboarding. Revisit when a new tool appears.
Do not skip the talk
A policy sent by email gets filed. A policy explained in ten minutes, with real examples from your own business, gets followed. Use the examples from page two — your team will recognise themselves, and laugh, and remember.
The aim is a team that uses AI confidently, not one that uses it secretly.
One page, four lines
Do not write a legal document. Write four lines, put them on one page, and spend ten minutes explaining them out loud. That is the whole job, and it is the difference between a team using AI well and a team using it quietly.