What you must never type into an AI

You are stuck on a form and one line makes no sense. The easiest thing in the world is to photograph the page and send it to an AI app. But your Aadhaar number is sitting right there on that page.

This lesson is one short list and one small habit. Learn both, and you can still get all the help you wanted.

The list. Learn this one before anything else

These never go into an AI app. Not once, not in a hurry, not in any app.

• Your Aadhaar number.
• Your bank account number.
• Your ATM PIN or your UPI PIN.
• Any OTP.
• Any password.
• Your debit or credit card number, and the three digits on the back.
• A photo or a scan of any identity document.

Your PAN number belongs on that list too. So does a photo of a passbook, a marksheet or a ration card.

Here is why. What you type does not stay on your phone. It travels to a company’s computer, far from your village, and it can be kept there. An AI app is a helpful stranger, not a locked drawer in your own house.

There is a second reason, and it is worse. You cannot always be sure which app you are in. Copies of the popular AI apps sit on the app store under similar names. Some charge money for a free service. Some carry harmful software that steals data from the phone. So the list above is not about trusting one company. It is a habit that protects you even when the app is fake.

Why an OTP gets a line of its own

An OTP is the short number that arrives by SMS when you pay or log in. It is proof that you are you. Anyone who has it can act as you for those few minutes.

The official Aadhaar guidance says it plainly. Never tell your Aadhaar OTP to anybody. Treat every other OTP the same way. That is also the first thing we teach every learner here. An AI app has no use for it. There is no honest reason to type one into a chat.

If you have already shared an OTP and money has gone, act at once, not tomorrow. Call 1930 and file a complaint at cybercrime.gov.in. Speed matters more than shame.

Write XXXX where the real number goes

Now the habit that lets you keep using AI for real work. Ask for the letter with a blank where the number belongs. Then write the real number by hand on the printed page.

Say you want a letter to your bank about money cut by mistake. Type this.

Write a short application in Hindi to a bank manager.
I am a customer. Money was cut from my account by mistake.
Do not put any real numbers in the letter.
Write ACCOUNT XXXX where my account number goes.
Write DATE XXXX where the date goes.
Keep it under 120 words. Simple words only.

A good answer comes back in Hindi letters. It is shown here in English letters so you can read it on this page.

Seva mein,
Shakha Prabandhak, ... Bank

Vishay: khate se galat kati gayi rashi ke bare mein

Mahoday,
Main aapke bank ka khatadhaarak hoon. Mera khata sankhya
ACCOUNT XXXX hai. DATE XXXX ko mere khate se rashi kat gayi...

Print it or copy it out. Then fill ACCOUNT XXXX and DATE XXXX with a pen. The bank gets the real number. The app never does.

Sometimes the app asks you for the number anyway. It is not being clever, and it is not testing you. It has seen thousands of letters that carry a number there, so it asks for one. Tell it to leave the blank as it is. Then read the letter once yourself, and check that no real detail crept in.

The same trick works for a job application, a leave letter and a complaint to an office. There is more on getting the wording right in writing applications and formal letters, and on scheme forms in understanding schemes and forms.

Photos of documents are the easiest mistake

This is the mistake almost everybody makes, and it comes from a good reason. You cannot read the form, so you photograph it and ask for help. The trouble is that the photo carries every number on the page.

There are two safe ways to do the same job.

The first is to type out only the part you want explained. Nothing else.

This line is from a government form. Explain it in simple Hindi.
Then tell me in one line what I have to actually do.

"Self attested copies of the documents listed in the annexure
shall be submitted along with the application."

The second is to cover the numbers before you photograph. Fold the paper, or lay a strip of paper over the number, or keep your thumb on it. Photograph the printed wording, not your details. Sending a picture is fine when the picture holds nothing private, and giving AI your notes and photos shows when that helps most.

For Aadhaar there is one more thing worth knowing. A masked version exists that hides the first eight digits and shows only the last four. To find the official page about it, search for UIDAI and check that the web address ends in gov.in before you trust it.

Other people’s details are not yours to give

Your own care is only half the job. A neighbour’s document, a friend’s marksheet, a cousin’s medical report, your shop’s customer list. None of that is yours to paste anywhere.

They did not agree to it. They do not even know. If it goes wrong, the harm lands on them and not on you, which is worse.

So ask first, and even then, take the details out. Change the name. Remove the numbers. You are usually asking about the meaning of a page, and the meaning does not need anybody’s name. When you help at home, the same rule holds, as helping your family with AI explains.

Health and court trouble, asked without naming yourself

Some things are private even when they contain no numbers. An illness. A court notice. A police matter. Money trouble in the family.

The fix is to ask the general question instead of the one that points at you.

Explain in simple Hindi what a TB treatment course means.
Then write five short questions I can ask the doctor.

That version teaches you what you need. It does not record that a named person in a named village has an illness. Never put in the patient’s name, the village, or the phone number.

One more thing. On medicine, money, law and government rules, the app is not the final word. It invents rule numbers and case names that sound completely real. Never write a court reply, an application or an official complaint straight from AI text. Get the answer from the doctor, the bank or the office itself, and check any AI answer before you act on it.

Whose phone is it, and who can read the chat

Most learners here do not own the phone they study on. A large survey of rural teenagers in 2024 found that about nine in ten had a smartphone at home. Only about three in ten owned one themselves.

So finish clean. Your chats stay inside the app on that phone, where the next person will see them. Sign out when you hand the phone back. Never let a borrowed phone remember your password.

If signing out each time is a nuisance, there is an easier way. Open the AI in the phone’s browser instead of the app. Use the kind of browser window that does not save your history, which is usually called private or incognito. Close that window when you finish and it takes the page with it. On a cyber cafe computer, this is the only way you should ever use these tools.

There is one last thing to be honest about. A chat is not a secret between you and a machine. Google puts its own warning in writing about its AI app.

“Please don’t enter confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services”.

In plain words, a real person may read some chats. So type only what you would be willing to say out loud in the village square.

What each company keeps, and which settings reduce it, is the whole of what happens to what you type. That is your next lesson.

Keep the one line version in your head until then. If losing it would hurt you, it does not go in the box.