What Is PII? Why It Must Come Out Before You License Data
By Andrew Smart, founder of MON$TER · About
PII (personally identifiable information) is any data that can identify a specific person: names, emails, phone numbers, street addresses, account numbers, government IDs, faces, and sometimes combinations like birth date plus ZIP code.
Why buyers want it gone
Reputable AI data buyers want anonymized, no-PII datasets. It lowers privacy risk for everyone, keeps deals simpler, and is often required by privacy laws and your own customer contracts. This is general information, not legal advice — talk to your own counsel about your obligations.
How PII gets removed
- Deletion: drop identifying fields entirely
- Masking/tokenizing: replace IDs with random tokens
- Aggregation: report groups and totals instead of individuals
- Generalizing: turn exact dates or locations into ranges
Clean, no-PII data is also what qualifies for non-exclusive recurring licenses, typically $300K-$3M per year. More terms in the glossary, and see is it legal to sell business data to AI? Then start at Business Data.