Privacy controls and safe habits

When you finish, you can find your data controls and follow simple habits that protect you and other people.

Know where your settings are

ChatGPT usually has a settings area with options about chat history, whether your chats may be used to improve the product, memory, and exporting or deleting your data. Names and options change, and they can differ by plan. Open yours and read it once, slowly.

Also read the current privacy information from the company. If you use a work or school account, an administrator may control some settings and may be able to see activity. Ask your organization what is stored and who can see it.

What never to paste

Do not paste passwords, card or bank numbers, government ID numbers, or private details about other people. Avoid pasting confidential work documents unless your employer approved the tool. If you must ask about something sensitive, replace real details with placeholders such as [customer] or [amount].

In regulated work, the rule is firm. In health, law, finance, education, counseling, insurance and government, never put patient, client, student or citizen identifying information into a consumer AI tool unless your employer has approved that tool for that data. Follow your employer's policy and your licensing body's rules.

Temporary chats and deleting

Many versions offer a temporary or private chat mode that is not saved to history in the usual way. Check what it does and does not do in the current help pages. It can be useful for one-off questions you do not want kept in your history.

You can usually delete individual chats. Deleting from your view is not always the same as being gone from every system, and retention rules vary. If something very sensitive was pasted by mistake, check the help pages for options and tell your employer if it was work data.

Honesty, bias and credit

AI answers can reflect bias or leave out views. Ask for more than one perspective on sensitive topics. If you use AI in school or work, follow the rules about disclosure. Saying how you used the tool is a sign of care, not weakness.

Worked example: a manager in Spain uses ChatGPT to draft a staff notice. She removes names, checks the policy details, rewrites it in her voice, and tells her team the draft had AI help. That is careful use.

Practice now

Open ChatGPT's data and privacy settings. Write down what controls you found and which you will change.
Take a work or personal message with private details and rewrite it using placeholders. Ask ChatGPT to help with the placeholder version.

Use any AI assistant you have. Do not paste private, client or patient information into it.

Check yourself

1. A temporary chat mode is best described as

2. Which belongs in a consumer AI chat?

3. Why disclose AI use when rules ask for it?

Ask the AI tutor

Ask anything about this lesson, in any language. The tutor is an AI: it can be wrong, and it never needs your personal details.

Take the final exam

AI-drafted. Checked by an automated validator and a separate AI reviewer; a person has not read every lesson. Translations and tutor answers are AI-made. Found a mistake? Tell us. AI can be wrong. General information only, not professional advice. Not affiliated with any AI company named. Current University is not accredited.