Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
If you’re one of the 900 million people who reportedly use ChatGPT every week, the chatbot might be a staple of life. Maybe it helps you get work done or come up with meal plans. You might even consult it whenever you have a scuffle with a friend or family member.
But as you turn to ChatGPT for increasingly more in your life, you may want to re-evaluate how much personal information you’re disclosing along the way. Ideally, you know not to disclose sensitive financial information — but other details about you could also be worth shielding.
Also: I put GPT-5.5 through a 10-round test: It got a near-perfect score
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Privacy experts are already sounding the alarm about the potential harms of saying too much to your chatbot. The underlying concern is that no one is entirely sure how your personal information, whether sensitive or seemingly innocuous, could be used in the future. Some fear personal data could end up in a mass surveillance system or be used in other unforeseen ways that will ultimately harm or disadvantage you.
That ambiguity, they argue, is reason enough for caution.
Here are five ways you can better manage the amount of personal information ChatGPT has about you, if you’re using a consumer account.
1. Opt out of training data
One step you can take to make your ChatGPT experience more secure is to stop OpenAI from using your information to train its models. Security experts are voicing concern that if your data ends up in a model, it could one day be used in a way we can’t even anticipate right now.
Go to Settings > Data controls > Improve the model for everyone. Then toggle the switches off and click “Done.”
Also: OpenAI is training models to ‘confess’ when they lie – what it means for future AI
You can also use OpenAI’s privacy portal to “Make a Privacy Request.” Select “I have a consumer ChatGPT account,” and then “Do not train on my content.” From there, you might be prompted to sign in. After that step, you’ll see a button to “Submit Request.”
This technique only applies to your data in ChatGPT moving forward.
2. Delete old chats
Another action you can take to clean up the information you’ve given to ChatGPT is to delete old chats. There are two ways to do this. One is to go to Settings > Data controls > Delete all chats.
You can also delete individual chats from the left-hand sidebar by clicking the three dots next to the name of the chat.
Also: How to clean up your digital footprint – and why it matters more than you think
Although the conversation will disappear from your chat history immediately, it can take up to 30 days to be permanently deleted from OpenAI’s systems, according to the company’s website.
OpenAI also stipulates two exceptions where this rule might not apply: circumstances where the company has to hang on to data for “security or legal obligations” or because the data has been “de-identified and disassociated from your account.”
3. Use temporary chats
If you don’t want to keep up with deleting chats as you go, you can use ChatGPT’s temporary chats. A temporary chat will not appear in your history, nor will it reference anything from previous conversations or memories. It will not be used for training data, either.
Similar to the retention policy for deleted chats, OpenAI might hold a copy of your temporary chat for up to 30 days, according to an FAQ page.
To start a temporary chat, click the button labeled “Temporary” in the bottom-right of a new chat.
For some ChatGPT users, this might lead to a less personalized experience, as ChatGPT won’t be able to learn anything new about you that might inform future responses.
4. Manage memories
The idea behind memories is for ChatGPT to retain certain chat details that could, in theory, make the chatbot more useful over time. For example, you might ask it to remember that you have a dog or are vegan.
According to ChatGPT’s FAQ on memories, there are two main settings you can use to control memory.
Also: 11 ways to delete or hide yourself from the internet
You can go to Settings > Personalization and then click the “Manage” button next to “Memory.” That step will pull up a list of saved memories that you can either delete altogether or individually. You can also toggle off the switches for “Reference saved memories” and “Reference chat history.”
OpenAI might also keep a log of saved memories for up to 30 days.
5. Delete your account
It’s a more extreme measure, but you can always delete your account altogether. It’s a permanent move, though, so be sure it’s what you want. One way to do this is to go to OpenAI’s privacy portal and “Make a Privacy Request.” Select “I have a consumer ChatGPT account,” and then “Delete my ChatGPT account.”
You can also go to Settings > Account and then click “Delete” under “Delete account. According to OpenAI, you can only do this if you logged on within the last 10 minutes; otherwise, you’ll have to sign in again. From there, you will have to type in your email to confirm and “DELETE,” which will unlock the “Permanently delete my account” button. Finally, click that button.
How to find out what ChatGPT knows
If you’re unsure of how much information you’ve given ChatGPT — and whether you should take any of the steps above — there’s a way you can get a fairly comprehensive idea of what the chatbot knows about you. Just ask ChatGPT.
My editor, Aly Windsor, asked ChatGPT directly how much it knew about her. It replied with a thorough list of personal details she’d shared with it. She then asked it to produce a prompt that could succinctly spell out everything it knew about her in a scannable profile, and fed the prompt back to ChatGPT. You can try the same approach. You might be surprised by what and how much it returns.
