AI assistants have now become deeply embedded in our everyday professional and private lives. This is why data protection is particularly important when using chatbots like ChatGPT. We’ll show you ten tips and tricks to protect your data.
Whether as a professional support or a virtual shrink: chatbots like ChatGPT are part of people’s daily lives at work and in everyday life.
But: While we feed the language models with endless amounts of information every day, cybercriminals are always working to steal this data and pass it on – often for abusive purposes. To protect yourself from such attacks, it is important to understand how AI language models work.
Data protection: This is how ChatGPT uses your data
OpenAI uses user data for several purposes: for training the AI, for troubleshooting and for statistical analysis. The company wants to continually improve the quality and performance as well as the security of ChatGPT.
Especially after some data breaches in the past, OpenAI invests a lot in the security of its products. The company emphasizes on its official consumer privacy page the promise that they will remain in control of their data.
At the same time, however, this means that security when using AI is a shared responsibility. While OpenAI primarily takes care of the infrastructure, ChatGPT users must actively pursue data protection through technical settings and conscious actions.
ChatGPT: Protect your data with these 10 tricks
There is one thing you should never forget: ChatGPT continuously passes on your data to OpenAI servers, at least as long as you do not take appropriate action. So that you retain full control over your data, we have summarized the ten most important tips and tricks for you based on current security guidelines.
1. Do not share sensitive data
With ChatGPT, data protection begins before the first prompt is entered. Never enter sensitive information, whether personal, financial or business. The red list includes, among other things, passwords, bank details, private addresses and company secrets. They have no place in the prompt. Treat every chat window as if the whole world could read it.
2. Disable AI training
By default, OpenAI uses your chats to train and improve AI models. To prevent this, you can go to the Settings above Data control Turn off the “Improve the model for everyone” option. This way you prevent your conversations from being used to train future models.
3. Enable two-factor authentication
Protect your account from unauthorized access by activating multi-factor authentication. To do this you go to the Settings on Security. For you it’s just a small click. This step represents an additional hurdle for hackers.
4. Use temporary chats
For particularly sensitive topics, you should use the temporary chat. To do this, click on the small dashed speech bubble in the model menu. Temporary chats do not appear in history, do not create lasting memories, and are only temporarily cached by OpenAI for abuse control.
5. Switch off background conversations on your smartphone
Anyone who uses the mobile app should deactivate the background conversation function. In the settings you can specify whether the AI constantly waits for a voice command. Turn it off to avoid unwanted audio recordings.
6. Anonymize data
When analyzing text documents or designing business strategies, you can replace real customer names and sensitive data with placeholders. You should describe specific details. The AI understands the context even without a real name, so internal information remains protected.
7. Erase the memory
ChatGPT has a memory function that allows it to remember information. While this is useful for personalization, it does nothing for your data protection. In the Settings you should under the tab personalization always check what the AI has stored about you and clean up from time to time.
8. No third-party connectors or plugins
You should also remain critical when it comes to linking Google Drive, OneDrive or plugins. Every connection is a potential security vulnerability. Only use extensions if they offer real added value and you trust the provider.
9. Log out regularly and clear your history
You should delete old chats that you no longer need at regular intervals. This also applies to the entire archive in the data settings. The less data in your profile, the less that can be stolen in a potential data breach. Also remember to log out after each session on all shared devices.
10. Use official apps and VPN
Only use the official OpenAI apps and the real website. Keep an eye out in the app store so you don’t end up with dubious third-party providers. If you are on public WiFi networks, you should also encrypt your connection using a VPN. This way you protect your data from the eyes of uninvited readers.
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