ChatGPT is a powerful AI assistant(ventana nueva) used by million of users daily, but is it safe to use? It’s owned and operated by OpenAI, one of the largest tech companies in the world. And like many Big Tech platforms, OpenAI collects large amounts of user data. That data is not protected with zero-access encryption, so the company can divulge it to business partners (including advertising and analytics companies), the government, and hackers in the event of a data breach.
Behind the scenes, OpenAI’s large language models (LLM) are constantly learning from what you type. Sensitive questions, like asking about health symptoms, legal matters, or intellectual property, can feed into complex profiling systems or help train AI models used far beyond your original intent.
Concerns about how AI companies handle user data are growing. In March 2026, over 2.5 million users(ventana nueva) pledged to leave ChatGPT after a controversial partnership with the US government raised questions about how AI systems are deployed and governed. It’s a reminder that when you interact with an AI assistant without strong privacy protections, you may be sharing more information than you realize.
- Is ChatGPT safe? The risks of using AI like ChatGPT and other Big Tech
- Things you should never share with ChatGPT
- How to stay safe when using ChatGPT
- Switch to a private AI assistant
Is ChatGPT safe? The risks of using AI like ChatGPT and other Big Tech
Before choosing AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Copilot, and DeepSeek, it’s worth understanding their security and privacy risks:
| Risk | Potential impact | Why it matters |
| Data collection and logging | Prompts, file uploads, and interaction patterns may be stored | Can be used for AI training, behavioral profiling, or human review |
| Lack of zero-access encryption | Conversations may be accessed by OpenAI and its partners | Increases risk of exposing sensitive data |
| Regulatory and IP concerns | GDPR/HIPAA exposure or proprietary data leaks | Legal liability and financial consequences |
| Closed-source system | Limited transparency into data handling | Requires trust in OpenAI |
| In-app ads | Increased tracking and profiling | Unclear how chat data informs personalized ads |
Personal privacy
Here’s what you risk by using ChatGPT:
- ChatGPT may collect the information you enter — such as questions, responses, and how you interact with the tool — to train its AI models. If you upload a resume, legal document, a medical report, or another file with personal data, that content may be stored and processed too.
- Even if you never enter your name or other personal data, your prompts can reveal patterns over time, such as health concerns, religious doubts, political leanings, family status, or emotional state. Combined with your IP address(ventana nueva) and other technical identifiers, these patterns can be used to build detailed behavioral profiles.
- You might be able to opt out of AI training, but your conversations are still logged and sensitive details might be seen by human reviewers if they’re flagged, such as when you submit feedback.
- Your chat history is protected while being sent and stored, but it’s not protected with zero-access encryption, so OpenAI or a third party can still access your past conversations.
- In July 2025, thousands of shared ChatGPT conversations appeared in Google search results(ventana nueva), exposing deeply personal exchanges that users likely assumed were private. OpenAI soon pulled the feature and said it was working with Google to de-index the results, but the incident highlights how easily AI interactions can slip into the public domain without you realizing it.
- In early 2026, OpenAI introduced ads for ChatGPT users on the free and ChatGPT Go plans. Despite assurances that ads won’t influence responses or involve sharing personal data with advertisers, the move follows a well-established Big Tech pattern in which advertising eventually becomes normalized after initial privacy concerns.
Business risk
OpenAI is a US company, so using ChatGPT can raise data protection concerns and risks of leaking sensitive information. If you’re based in Europe or elsewhere, your data could still be subject to US jurisdiction since it’s processed by a US company. Here’s what that means:
- Without strong data protection guarantees, your organization risks fines or regulatory scrutiny under laws such as GDPR and HIPAA(ventana nueva).
- You risk leaks by training AI models on your company data. For example, employees might enter proprietary code, confidential contracts, or client information into ChatGPT, potentially exposing intellectual property, trade secrets, or customer data.
- OpenAI may share data with partners, vendors, other third parties, or through app integrations — which could have weaker privacy protections or different data policies. In 2025, a breach involving one of OpenAI’s analytics vendors exposed identifying information about API customers.
- Under US laws like the Patriot Act or FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), companies can be compelled to provide data to government agencies, often with secrecy orders that prevent them from notifying users.
Lack of transparency
The above are known risks. But what’s especially risky about ChatGPT (and other closed source software) is what you aren’t permitted to know.
- The code of ChatGPT’s apps are not open source, so there’s no public oversight into how it works, what it logs, or how it processes your data behind the scenes. You must rely on OpenAI’s policies and trust that the system handles data responsibly.
- Although OpenAI has released open-weight models that can be publicly examined, the AI models that ChatGPT uses aren’t open source so you can’t check how the data was pre-trained on large datasets.
Things you should never share with ChatGPT
Even though ChatGPT can be helpful, you should never treat it like a secure vault for sensitive information. Avoid entering anything that could harm you, your company, or others if it were stored, reviewed, or accidentally exposed:
Passwords and authentication data, such as account passwords, two-factor authentication (2FA) codes, backup authentication codes, or private API keys.
Government identification numbers, including Social Security, national ID, passport, driver’s license, and tax identification numbers.
Financial and banking information, such as credit or debit card numbers, IBANs, online banking credentials, investment account logins, or Bitcoin wallet private keys.
Highly sensitive personal data that could be used to identify or track you or your family, such as home address and phone number, birth date, or private photos or documents.
Health information, such as medical reports, diagnostic records, insurance numbers, patient IDs, or detailed health histories tied to your identity.
Confidential work or company data, including proprietary source code, internal strategy documents, confidential contracts, customer databases, client details, financial projections, unpublished reports, or NDAs.
Legal and privileged information, such as attorney-client communications, legal case strategies, evidence documents, or confidential settlement discussions.
How to stay safe when using ChatGPT
You don’t have to avoid AI tools entirely, but you should treat them like public-facing services rather than private workspaces. A few simple habits can significantly reduce your risk:
- Avoid sharing sensitive information you wouldn’t want stored, reviewed, or exposed publicly.
- Remove identifying details or replace them with placeholders or fictional examples.
- Only upload files that do not contain sensitive or confidential information.
- Treat AI chats like emails or support tickets that could be seen by other people.
- Review privacy settings and disable settings like chat history, memory, or AI training.
- Delete conversations you no longer need to reduce how much personal information remains associated with your account.
Switch to a private AI assistant
If you’re concerned about sharing personal or business information with AI tools, try Lumo. Our private AI assistant never logs your conversations or uses them for model training. Your data is protected with bidirectional asymmetric encryption (a form of end-to-end encryption) and processed on European servers controlled by Proton.
When you use Lumo with a Proton Account, your conversations are protected with zero-access encryption, meaning only you can read them — not even Proton. For maximum privacy, Ghost mode allows you to use Lumo without saving any history at all.
Lumo uses open-source models, so anyone can verify that no hidden tracking or data collection occurs.
Try Lumo now and see what AI looks like when your privacy matters most. And when you’re ready to bring that same level of privacy to your workplace, Lumo for Business helps your team collaborate securely and stay productive without compromising sensitive company data.
You can also download Lumo from Google Play(ventana nueva) or App Store(ventana nueva).
