Keeping personal and confidential data out of the prompt
Respondents in every stakeholder group report withholding personal, sensitive and confidential material from prompts, preferring platforms the institution has licensed to publicly available ones, and using temporary chat modes so that no record is retained. The report characterises the pattern as a habit rather than as compliance with a rule.
Record
- Level
- Micro
- Domain
- Data Protection, Privacy and Security
- Country
- Multiple countries
- Context
- Higher education
- Maturity
- Established
- Scalability
- Established
- Transferability
- Embedded
- Source report
- R3
Account of the practice
Data protection is documented at the institutional level as an instrument, taking the form of a policy, a processing agreement or a licensed platform. This record captures the practice that operates at the point at which a person composes a prompt. Three measures recur and they are of different kinds. The first is a rule concerning content, according to which identifying and confidential material does not enter the prompt at all. The second is a choice of venue, according to which a licensed platform is used in preference to a free one because the terms attached to them differ. The third is a setting, according to which a temporary chat is opened so that the exchange is not retained.
What makes the pattern worth recording separately from the policies that also require it is the characterisation offered by the report itself. It describes confidentiality as having become a habit rather than remaining a policy, which is a statement about where the behaviour is now located. A measure that holds without enforcement has moved from the institution into the practice, and this is the definition applied in this report for the micro level.
The same respondents who describe the habit also name the instruments through which they acquired it, and this record and the institutional data protection records should therefore be read together rather than as alternatives.
Source trail
The source on which this record rests, the place in the document and the sentence found there. Quotations are searched for mechanically in the source file and the page on which they were located is recorded.
- 01R3 · Report on trends in policies and practices on the use of LLMs and generative AI in the partnership: Third report (draft)ADMIT (Erasmus+, EADTU)Section 3.2.3Quotation located in the source
No adding of personal data in the prompting that is sensitive for reasons of data protection or that are otherwise confidential.
The rule is stated at the level of the prompt, which is where the micro-level decision is actually taken.
- 02R3 · Report on trends in policies and practices on the use of LLMs and generative AI in the partnership: Third report (draft)ADMIT (Erasmus+, EADTU)Section 3.2.3Quotation located in the source
temporary chats to avoid storage, use of official AI platforms that are in line with University policies
The two further measures show that the practice is not only a prohibition on content but also a choice of venue and of setting.
- 03R3 · Report on trends in policies and practices on the use of LLMs and generative AI in the partnership: Third report (draft)ADMIT (Erasmus+, EADTU)Section 3.2.3Quotation located in the source
confidentiality has become a habit, rather than a mere policy
The report's own characterisation is what places the practice at the micro level rather than counting it again under the institutional instruments that require it.
Evidence
The reported evidence on the effect of the practice. Evidentiary strength varies between practices; it is reproduced here as the source reports it.
Named by the report as one of the most cited themes across all four stakeholder groups, supported by verbatim quotations from administrators, support staff, teachers and students.