What is Zecretly? Our story

In short: Zecretly grew out of everyday work in finance, asset management and fiduciary services, which we know from our own experience. There we saw how easily client data ends up in places where it does not belong. We are two brothers and we built Zecretly: an application that replaces confidential details in documents and texts with placeholders before you pass them on or upload them to an AI service such as ChatGPT or Claude. Everything runs on your computer.

One room, two tables

This room holds our workplace: two tables, each with three screens. Here we sit down, each at our own place, and work on Zecretly.

We want to bring Zecretly into the Swiss economy, to where it is needed: into the offices of freelancers, fiduciaries, asset managers and small and medium-sized businesses.

How we got here

We grew up in the same family, and one thing has bound us together from early on: we wanted to make a difference, above all in Switzerland. To work for ourselves, to build something, to achieve something. That was always focus number one.

For a long time we tried it separately, each on our own, and tried many things. One of them was trading on Ricardo. We bought cheaply and sold on at a higher price. The profit was never the goal in itself. It was meant to pay for the next step, and at the beginning it financed Zecretly, because we needed money to start.

At some point we decided to try it together for once.

What we saw in everyday work

For several weeks we asked ourselves what could help the Swiss economy, the people in the country and above all the companies. Right now, as AI services like ChatGPT arrive in offices and raise new questions, that seemed more urgent than usual.

The answer was closer than we thought. We know everyday work in finance, asset management and fiduciary services from our own experience and know where the hurdles are, what is especially annoying and which mistakes keep happening. We also saw it up close with a self-employed relative. It was always about the same thing: client data.

A name, an address, an amount, and suddenly something is in a document or in a chat where it does not belong. That this happens now and then is human. It gets more delicate when texts and files end up in AI services like ChatGPT to be summarized, translated or reworded.

That made us think. This problem cannot be made to disappear. But you can help make sure it does not arise in the first place.

From Tresor to Zecretly

The idea came to us from far away: prohibit nothing and lock nothing away, but replace the confidential details before a document leaves the computer. If a name is no longer in the text, it cannot be passed on.

The project was first called Tresor, German for safe. Then we decided on Zecretly.

Think first, then build

Before we built a single line, we wrote a briefing. What makes sense and what does not? How feasible is it at all? What are the hurdles, the dangers, the opportunities, the strengths? We did thorough analyses, over days, then over weeks, in the end over months.

Only then came the first tests. They looked good. That was the moment an idea became a project. Since then we have been developing it further, step by step.

What Zecretly does today

Zecretly finds names, companies, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, IBANs, Swiss social security numbers and customer numbers and replaces them with placeholders. Amounts and dates are replaced as well, or shifted to other matching values, depending on the protection level. An example with invented data:

Ms Marina Keller transfers CHF 7,080 to Feldweg 14, 8000 Zurich.
becomes
Ms [PERSON_1] transfers [BETRAG_1] to [ADRESSE_1].

The document stays readable and coherent, and the confidential details are no longer in it. You open the AI's answer with Zecretly again, and the real values are back.

There are two ways to a protected document. You select a text and press Ctrl+Alt+Z, or you right-click a file or a folder and choose “Protect with Zecretly”. Zecretly reads Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF as well as emails as .eml and .msg. Three protection levels decide how far the protection goes: Normal, Strong (the default) and Maximum.

Protecting and restoring work without the internet. The mapping of placeholder and real value is stored encrypted on your device.

Zecretly does not find every value. Paraphrases such as “the owner of the bakery at the station” and text in images on pages with regular text are not read reliably. Zecretly reads scanned PDFs only on Windows, using the built-in text recognition. That is why the application does not replace your own check: look at the report before you pass anything on. The page How it works shows the individual steps.

Where we want to go

We want to keep developing Zecretly and make it known in the Swiss economy, in exchange with the people who use it. We say openly what Zecretly can and cannot do, because trust begins exactly there.

If you notice something or miss something, write to us at hallo@zecretly.com. We welcome every piece of feedback.

Which article fits your work?

• Protect client data without a costly business plan: the basics
• AI for accountants and fiduciaries: protect payroll, tax and accounts
• AI for small businesses: a simple rule for the team
• AI for freelancers: no IT department, no business contract
• Professional secrecy and AI: what lawyers and doctors need to consider