Zecretly Deutsch Download for Windows

Professional secrecy and ChatGPT: notes for lawyers and doctors

· Zecretly

The short answer: In Switzerland, lawyers, doctors and several other professions are bound by professional secrecy under Article 321 of the Criminal Code, and lawyers also under Article 13 of the Lawyers Act. Placeholders reduce what a service like ChatGPT or Claude learns about your clients or patients. They don't answer the question of whether you may use the service at all. And even with placeholders, the context can give a person away.

Who is bound by professional secrecy?

Article 321 of the Swiss Criminal Code names clergy, lawyers, defense counsel, notaries, patent attorneys, auditors bound to confidentiality under the Code of Obligations, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, pharmacists, midwives, psychologists, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nutritionists, optometrists and osteopaths, as well as their assistants. Anyone who discloses a secret entrusted to them in this capacity can, on complaint, face up to three years in prison or a fine. This still applies after they stop practicing.

For lawyers, Article 13 of the Lawyers Act (BGFA) adds that they are bound by professional secrecy without time limit and toward everyone. They must also make sure their assistants keep it.

What does this mean for ChatGPT and Claude?

When you upload a document, you share its content with the provider. Article 9 of the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) only allows outsourcing to a service provider if no legal or contractual duty of confidentiality prohibits it. Whether, and under what conditions, a particular service is acceptable for your work depends on the case: on your contract with the provider, where the data is stored, and on consent, for example. We can't assess that for you. Ask your professional association or your legal advisor. In the EU, the GDPR and national professional rules apply.

What we can say regardless: the less a document reveals about a person, the less can get out.

What do placeholders do?

On your computer, Zecretly replaces names, companies, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, IBANs, Swiss social security (AHV) numbers and customer numbers with placeholders. It shifts or also replaces amounts and dates. An example with made-up data from a medical report:

Ms. Laura Steiner, born March 14, 1979, AHV no. 756.1234.5678.97
becomes, at the "Maximum" level,
Ms. [PERSON_1], born [DATUM_1], AHV no. [AHV_1]

The medical or legal content stays, because that's exactly what the service needs to help: making a report easier to read, structuring a brief or drafting a letter to an insurer. Afterwards you restore the answer with Zecretly. The link between placeholder and real value is stored encrypted on your computer and never goes online.

Why aren't placeholders always enough?

Zecretly is reversible. Technically that's pseudonymization, not anonymization: whoever has the link can identify the person again. Learn more in Anonymize or pseudonymize.

Then there's context. Even without a name, a document can reveal who it's about:

Zecretly doesn't reliably recognize descriptions like these. It only replaces place names in running text from the "Strong" level up.

How do I go about it carefully?

  1. Check first whether you may work with a service, and which one.
  2. Upload only what's needed: an excerpt instead of the whole file.
  3. Choose the "Maximum" level if amounts and dates don't matter for the task.
  4. Ask for the placeholders to stay as they are: "Leave all placeholders in square brackets exactly as they are." If the service changes [PERSON_1] into something else, Zecretly can't restore that spot.
  5. Read the protected copy and remove clues about the person. In the field “Etwas übersehen?” (“Missed something?”) you can add a term in Zecretly, and it will replace that too.
  6. Turn off training in your account or use a business plan that, according to the provider, doesn't train by default. More in Protect client data without a costly business plan.
  7. Delete case files when you no longer need them. You can do that right away in the settings. Otherwise Zecretly deletes a case file the next time it starts after 30 days without use.

What can't Zecretly do?

Zecretly doesn't find every value. Text in images and scanned PDFs without a text layer, such as a scanned lab report, aren't reliably read, and PDFs lose their layout. Zecretly is not a substitute for a legal review and doesn't guarantee that any use is permitted. It's a tool that lets less information leave your computer.

Sources

Try Zecretly: The app works locally on your computer. Download Zecretly or first read how Zecretly works.