Perplexity Security Basics

Overview

Security best practices for Perplexity Sonar API. Key concerns: API key protection (keys start with pplx-), query sanitization (Perplexity searches the open web, so PII in queries gets sent to external sources), and response handling (citations link to third-party sites).

Prerequisites

• Perplexity API key from perplexity.ai/settings/api
• Understanding of environment variable management
• .gitignore configured to exclude secret files

Instructions

Step 1: API Key Management

# .env (NEVER commit to git)
PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx