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Enable anonymization to automatically remove personally identifiable information (PII) from your text before analysis, keeping you compliant with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
Anonymization cannot be undone. Only the anonymized version is stored in Caplena. The original data is automatically and permanently deleted from Caplena’s servers within 7 days of upload.

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Enabling Anonymization

Anonymization is configured when creating a new project:
  1. Click New Project and proceed through the upload flow
  2. At the Anonymization step, toggle it on
  3. Select which PII types to anonymize (see below)
  4. Click Continue to proceed with your import
Anonymization is a plan-gated feature. If your subscription doesn’t include anonymization, creating a project with it enabled is blocked. Contact support to upgrade your plan.

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Editing Anonymization Settings After Setup

You can update a project’s anonymization settings at any time from Project Settings → Anonymization.
1
Open your project and click the gear icon (⚙️) in the left-hand menu
2
Switch to the Anonymization tab
3
Adjust the enabled PII classes, advanced settings, allow-list, or block-list. Changes are saved automatically.
Changes apply to future imports only. Data already imported into the project is not re-processed, and previously anonymized text cannot be restored — anonymization on existing data cannot be undone.
Editing anonymization requires the Edit project permission and a subscription plan that includes anonymization. What you can change: the enabled PII classes (including advanced classes), the allow-list, and the block-list.

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Choosing What to Anonymize

Once enabled, a settings panel lets you select the PII types to mask:
Anonymization settings panel
For more granular control, click Advanced Settings to include additional PII types (ZIP code, religion, gender, and more), add custom sensitive data fields, or tailor anonymization to industry-specific compliance requirements.
Advanced anonymization settings

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Allow-list & Block-list

Fine-tune anonymization behavior with two optional lists: Allow-list — Terms that should never be anonymized, even if they look like names (e.g. Smith, John Doe). Block-list — Terms that should always be anonymized, even if they aren’t names (e.g. is, very curious). To add terms, click “Add term” or paste a list directly from Excel. Matching is case-insensitive and whole-word only — partial matches are ignored. Block-list example — is and very curious configured as blocked terms:

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Address vs. Location

Caplena distinguishes between two related but different PII types:
“I visited Lake Victoria.” → with Location enabled → “I visited [location].” “I live at 12 Abbey Road, 23783 London.” → with Address enabled → “I live at [address].”
How Address, Street, City, and ZIP interact:
If you anonymize too much or something goes wrong, you’ll need to re-upload the data in a new project. Reach out to support — we’re happy to help and will reimburse credits if needed.

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Anonymization & Translation

Anonymization runs before translation. Anonymized source text will also produce anonymized translations — the two features work seamlessly together.
Not all languages are currently supported for anonymization. Texts in unsupported languages may be only partially anonymized.
Supported languages:
Last modified on July 3, 2026