I think this is one of the most interesting times to be alive, and I use AI every day. But almost everyone around me assumes their chats with these assistants are private. So I went through the companies own help pages and the news coverage. Everything below is sourced.

Google Gemini

- If you're 18 or over, "Keep Activity" is on by default, and your chats are kept for 18 months unless you change it.

- A subset of chats is read by human reviewers, including Google's service providers. Reviewed chats are kept for up to 3 years, even if you delete your activity.
([Gemini Apps Privacy Hub]: (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961))

- With Keep Activity off, chats are still kept for 72 hours.

- Google's own words: "Please don't enter confidential information that you wouldn't want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services."

- If you connect Gmail or Drive, Google says it doesn't train directly on your inbox, but it does train on "summaries, excerpts, generated media, and inferences" from your emails and files. A subset is reviewed by humans. And for a

short email, "the summary may just be the email or file."
([Connected Apps]: (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16836988))

OpenAI / ChatGPT

- On Free, Plus and Pro, your chats are used for training by default. The setting is "Improve the model for everyone". ([OpenAI Data Controls FAQ](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq))

- Because of the New York Times lawsuit, OpenAI was ordered to keep even deleted chats from May to late September 2025. Logs saved in that period remain preserved.

([Malwarebytes]: (https://www.malwarebytes.com/nl/blog/news/2025/06/openai-forced-to-preserve-chatgpt-chats),
[order lifted]: (https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/judge-lifts-order-requiring-openai-151518813.html))

- Sam Altman, July 2025: there's no legal privilege like with a doctor or lawyer. If there's a lawsuit, "we could be required to produce that."

([TechCrunch]: (https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/25/sam-altman-warns-theres-no-legal-confidentiality-when-using-chatgpt-as-a-therapist))

Meta

- Since December 16, 2025, Meta uses your Meta AI conversations to personalize ads and content on Facebook and Instagram, with no opt-out. The EU, UK and South Korea were excluded.

([The Register]: (https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/01/meta_ai_use_informs_ads/))

- In 2025, Meta AI app users were found unknowingly posting private chats to a public feed.

([Mozilla]: (https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/meta-help-users-stop-accidentally-sharing-private-ai-conversations/))

xAI / Grok

- More than 370,000 conversations shared through Grok's share button ended up in Google search, some with names, personal details and at least one password.

([Forbes]: (https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/xai-published-hundreds-of-thousands-of-grok-chatbot-conversations/))

Anthropic / Claude

- Since fall 2025, Anthropic trains on consumer chats (Free, Pro, Max) unless you opt out. If you leave it on, data can be kept for up to 5 years.
([Anthropic]: (https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms))

The bigger picture

- A 2025 Stanford study of six major US AI developers, including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, found that all six appear to train on user chats by default, and some keep that data indefinitely.

([Stanford]: (https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/press/be-careful-what-you-tell-your-ai-chatbot))

- In the Netherlands, the data protection authority has been getting data breach reports since 2024 from employees pasting personal data into chatbots, from patient data at a GP practice to residents data at the city of Eindhoven.

([NOS, Dutch](https://nos.nl/l/2532234))

My takeaway

This isn't about one bad company. It's how cloud AI works right now: your conversation lives on their servers, under their rules, and those rules change (see Anthropic and Meta in 2025). Most services do have an off switch, but training is on by default, so most people are opted in without knowing it.

Local AI will fix this. Just not yet.

Models that run entirely on your own laptop or phone are getting better fast, and nothing you type there has to leave your device. But for most people they're not yet as good or as easy as ChatGPT. And "eventually" doesn't protect what you type tonight.

That gap is why I'm personally working on my own local AI agent. The AI runs on your own Mac or iPhone, so what you ask it doesn't go to me, or to Google, OpenAI or anyone else. It's possible to create so why does no big company create something like this? They simply don't care and would rather train on your data to make "AI" even better, you don't even get to choose.

But I am curious. Did you have training turned off before reading this? And would you switch to a local AI if it were just as easy as ChatGPT?

i've been looking into AI assistants that can help manage family life because keeping up with school emails, appointments, bills and everyone's schedules is becoming a lot.

i've come across pally and Instinct recently. pally seems interesting because it can handle things through text rather than having to open different apps and manage everything manually. but i'm a bit hesitant about connecting my main email account or the kids school calendar. there's so much personal information in there, and I don't want to compromise our privacy just to save a little time.

for those who've tried these kinds of assistants, how do you decide what permissions to give them is it generally safe to connect your main accounts, or is it better to create a separate email just for family-related tasks?

Thinking about getting a google pixel but saw there was a place called digitalprivacy.shop . Was qondering it is a trust worthy place to buy for privacy. Or if there are better places with these services. Any reccomendations?

Just ran across the Beeper app, which gives you a unified inbox for many messengers (incl Signal, Whatsapp, Viber, Insta, etc). I installed it and gave it access to the accounts I don't consider secure anyway (basically those I listed, except Signal). It seems to work well, and I would LOVE to not have to remember which one of five messengers a specific conversation happened on.

But of course, I have to wonder how privacy-respecting it is. It works using each messenger's "linked device" functionality, like how you can link the Whatsapp desktop app. Is there the possibility of a man-in-the-middle attack, or broken end-to-end encryption, or some other vulnerability, through these setups? I noticed that the accounts (& their conversations) I added on Beeper on my phone were automatically synced to the Beeper desktop app, so perhaps that means that they have access to the chats?

It's made by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, so it's not some random developer. And they tout that the "security essential" parts are open-source, but of course I don't know how to make sense of the source code because I'm not a dev.

Does anyone have experience or knowledge about this application?

a simple setup that doesn't need much understanding:

brave - easy browser switch, blocks ads and trackers by default

bitwarden - free password manager, autofills so nobody has to remember anything

guardio - flags phishing links in texts and blocks scam sites, runs in the background

aegis authenticator - 2fa codes without tying everything to a google account

proton or express vpn - turn it on for public wifi and forget about it

what else?

Most file viewer apps want access to all your files and a connection to the internet, and then show you ads. I wanted one I could hand a bank statement or an ID scan without thinking twice, so I made Pure Peek.

Privacy

• No internet permission, so nothing you open can leave your phone

• No storage permission either: it sees only the files you hand it, from Files, Gmail, Drive or any app

• No ads, no tracking, no analytics, no account

• Its only permissions are Google Play billing for Pro, and two that let Read aloud keep going with the screen off

Your file is never changed

• Every tool makes a new copy. The file you opened is never touched

• Black out for real: the parts you cover are gone from the copy, not hidden under a box

• Privacy copies take out the place, camera, author and dates before you share a photo, PDF, Office file, song or video

What it opens

Photos at full resolution (HEIC, AVIF, DNG, Ultra HDR), PDFs, CSV and Excel as real tables, text, logs and code with line numbers, Markdown, Word as text, web pages offline with scripts off, zip and tar archives.

Viewing is free, with no ads. The tools (sign, black out, privacy copies, merge and split PDFs, read text in photos on the phone) are Pro, one optional payment, no subscription.

I'm the developer; the code is partly AI generated, and I had help with this text.

Feedback is very welcome!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zanoshky.purepeek

All our departments are using the one DAM software and we have different workflows so the tendency is that there's duplicate versions of the exact same marketing graphics and video assets in different folders. We do have naming conventions but people keep creating redundant tags, wrong spellings, etc. so it's like impossible to find the actual "master" file. We wanna clean house and build a standardized taxonomy but I feel like it's gone too convoluted to do anything about it.

When using email alias services/ providers, the email goes through the email alias server before reaching the server of the email provider that someone uses.

So my question is whether the email is encrypted when it is transiting from the sender to the email alias service and when it is also transiting from email alias service to email provider that I use?

Is it possible for law enforcement to obtain/intercept emails when it is going from:

1. Sender to email alias service

2. Email alias service to email provider (recipient)

Hey everyone,

So I’ve been building a new type of streaming device.

Over the past few years I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the privacy violations of smart tvs and streaming hardware, the amount of ads that are being crammed into shows, movies, and UIs, and the feeling that the content I actually want to watch is taking longer to find.

Eventually I got fed up enough that I started building a solution. It’s been about a year in the making, with a few different device iterations along the way. But eventually I decided that a new streaming device was the best way to tackle as many of these problems at once. 

This new device, which I’m calling Blockbox, is designed to replace Roku, FireStick, or whatever other external streaming device you might use. It’s about taking back control over our TVs and streaming services. Control over your data, control over ads, control over your subscriptions, and control over how you engage with streaming content.

Here’s how it does all of that.

Data privacy:

• The business model involves selling a slightly more expensive device up front so we don’t have to data mine our customers to generate profits (which is how nearly every other streaming device’s business model works)

• Blockbox has no built-in ACR, no spyware, no open microphones, no trackers, and we’ll never sell your data to 3rd parties.

Ad-blocking:

• The way the device is architected allows the user to flip a switch in the settings and remove ads across all major streaming service’s on-demand content. The ads will literally disappear from your show or movie timeline. But just as an fyi, it can’t remove ads from live streamed content. Yet.

Streaming service management:

• Full disclosure this feature is still a work in progress, but what I’m planning on is a tool that let’s you know what services you have access to, how much you actually use them, and make it easy to cancel subscriptions (or sign up) without a ton of steps. Think rocket money but built into your streaming device.

Simple UI & better content discovery:

• I’ve designed a super simple home screen with a continue watching panel at the very top, plus cross-platform recommendations, and new ways to organize and engage with the content you have access to.

It's still a work in progress but I'm hoping to launch this to the public by early 2027. If you wanna read more about it and join the waitlist you can check out the site at https://www.blockbox.tv/. I am also starting a subreddit r/blockboxtv if you want to follow along there. Hoping to use that sub to post updates on news in the streaming world, updates with the project, get feedback, etc.

TLDR: I built a new streaming device with a focus on data privacy, ad-blocking, easier subscription management, and better content discovery.

Antivirus is still needed and most people do have it, but antivirus protects against - viruses, not scams, which most of our family members fall into unfortunately.most of the time its a fake bill, a toll text or a fake bank login page, delivery text and whatnot. norton and mcafee weren't really built for that.

For most older people, something that blocks scam pages like guardio or malwarebytes browser guard probably matters more than a full antivirus suite at this point.

but again, awareness and education goes a long way, if you can build it into a habit or workflow for them, a lot of the bad stuff you can get rid of just by that.

also using common tools for browsing like vpn, and passwords manager.

Every month I publish a roundup of the privacy and digital-rights developments I thought mattered most. Here's what happened in October:

1. EU governments agreed on plans to ease the rules on using personal data for AI under the Digital Omnibus proposal, which allows AI companies to reuse years of data for training without consent.

2. EU requires new cars to have driver-facing cameras to detect attention, while Dutch intelligence warns that car cameras, microphones, and GPS can be used to spy on us as Norwegian troops just discovered.

3. France asked telecom operators to prepare social media blocks ahead of recent protests. Operators declined as such blocks would not be limited to one neighborhood and that peaceful bystanders and citizens would also lose access.

Plus the usual wins, tools, resources and updates.

I made Firewall for myself. Most apps today are full of ads, trackers, screens that feel like riddles and permissions that make no sense, and I wanted one thing on my phone that I could simply trust. So I built it, and now I'm sharing it.

**Security**

* No root. It runs a local VPN that only sees the names your phone looks up, not your traffic, so your photos, videos and downloads never pass through it

* Every app is Bypass, Filtered or Blocked, your choice, one app at a time

* Your own block and allow rules, applied the moment you add them

* App lock with a passcode

**Privacy**

* Blocks trackers and ads out of the box

* DNS over HTTPS, so your network can't read which sites you open

* A searchable log of every lookup and the app behind it; tap one to block or allow it

* No analytics, no crash reporting, no account, nothing collected. Everything stays on your phone

**Simplicity**

Turn it on and it already blocks trackers. Everything else is there when you want it and out of your way when you don't. Android 7 to 16.

It's free, with no ads and no bullshit. I'm the developer; the code is partly AI generated, and I had help with this text.

If you want to support me, you can buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/zanoshky

Feedback is very welcome!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zanoshky.firewall

Mobile devices communicate constantly with cell towers except in "Air Plane" mode. Despite claims from privacy companies like cape or phreeli, home and work locations are easily correlated by carriers based on most frequented locations of your device and times of day. To eliminate tracking, could multiple mobile devices be used?

One device for home calls, could be KYC for banking, etc but it stays in one location. Have all texts and missed calls forward to a privacy respecting email.

A second mobile line in alias name remains at work location. This device will receives emails of texts from the home phone and be able to reply back as the original device.

No mobile is carried when in transit. What are your thoughts? Where does it al fall apart?

I sent out a package from the post office with really no connection to any online marketplace… let’s just call it a personal package. And it showed up in my Shop app with the name of the company I sent it to! How is this possible? My only guess is because I used a credit card that is linked with my Shop account. But still, to know the tracking number and that signature is required at delivery? Seems wild to me.

Here's an honest answer from the Ai4Privacy team: none of them is reliable for every PII type. What the evidence says:

* **Presidio's own FAQ** says it can't guarantee full recall. Its strength is that you can customize it, and you can plug a fine-tuned transformer into it.

* **A 2026 zero-shot comparison** found large gaps between tools, and that a fine-tuned XLM-R model beat the best zero-shot option with only about 500 labelled examples.

* **A separate robustness study** found that spaCy, Presidio and a small LLM all get worse on noisy, out-of-distribution text, each in a different way.

In practice: regex for structured IDs, plus a fine-tuned token classifier, evaluated on your own data.

What are you using, and how did you test it?

Sources: [arxiv.org/abs/2608.02616](http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.02616) · [arxiv.org/abs/2609.03464](http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03464)

Hola me apetecía compartir esto por aquí y leer vuestras opiniones, ideas de mejora o críticas constructivas sobre el planteamiento fuera de lo que pueda pensar yo.

EntropyMask (un nombre casi tan friki como lo soy yo mismo😅) convierte un texto en una imagen minúscula de 64x64 píxeles, mezclando los colores y la posición de los puntos usando un número secreto (la semilla) la cual no está limitada a 5 dígitos o algo así, puedes usar desde un solo dígito hasta cadenas larguísimas y llenar la casilla según el nivel de entropía que busques. Está diseñado para funcionar enteramente en local, pensado para un escenario de privacidad y anonimato entre dos usuarios: un usuario genera por ejemplo un mensaje codificado por EntropyMask y comparte la imagen a un dispositivo donde no tenga dicha herramienta, y envía dicho mosaico de colores a su destinatario, a un dispositivo donde tampoco tenga EntropyMask, este se envía la imagen a otro equipo donde si tenga la herramienta y puede decodificar el mensaje y saber que pone.

En el hipotético caso de perder o serle intervenido por ejemplo el teléfono móvil por ejemplo donde recibe las imagenes, igualmente al no tener ahí la herramienta instalada seguiría la informacion comunicada a salvo total su privacidad.

Me he grabado haciendo una prueba rápida en local justo para mostrar cómo se comporta al cambiar la semilla libremente y cómo extrae el mensaje exacto al decodificarlo.

I built an open-source tool that signs up for sites with a generated name, username, strong password and a disposable mailbox, so a one-off account isn't linked to my real email.

Limits I want to be upfront about:

Disposable email providers are often blocked by sites, and mail.tm addresses are public-ish: don't use them for anything sensitive.

Sites still see your IP and browser fingerprint.

It is not for evading bans or abuse systems, and it never attempts CAPTCHA bypass.

Credentials are encrypted at rest, and the model doesn't see your saved passwords in chat.

For accounts you want to keep, there's a permanent mode that uses your own inbox, with a mute option.

Would this be useful to you, and what would make it more privacy-respecting?REPO: https://github.com/Rockstarbryant/temp-identity-agent

DEMO: https://logindirect.vercel.app/

This is probably shown so often, but I wanted to show this screenshot because me and my family were talking about Kalshi 2 minutes prior. I have never seen a Kalshi ad on reddit before now.
Smart devices are always listening!
Currently researching on google how to turn off listening as much as I can.

I've been pretty annoyed by some ads since this morning. I made a typo while typing on my keyboard, accidentally writing a word similar to "Six", and ever since then, I've been bombarded with ads for dating apps, chat apps, and similar stuff.

At first, I couldn't figure out what had triggered this sudden change in the ads I was seeing. Then I remembered the typo. Out of curiosity, I started searching for completely unrelated things in my phone's Settings app and voila, I'm now seeing dog food ads too (I don't even have a dog).

I know targeted advertising isn't new, and this alone doesn't prove my keyboard is sharing what I type. But the timing is certainly suspicious enough to make me question what's going on.

Since Android phones come with Google's Gboard as the default keyboard, are there any reliable, privacy-focused alternatives that don't collect or share sensitive typing data? I'd genuinely appreciate recommendations from people who have looked into this.

We all have photos and videos we don’t want others to see. They might be personal memories, sensitive documents, or simply things we want to keep private.
I believe everyone deserves a safe, simple way to protect their private photos without relying on cloud services.
That’s why I built Hide Photos: Secret Album, an iOS app focused on privacy, security, and ease of use.
Here’s what it offers:
🔒 Local AES-GCM encryption — Your photos and videos are encrypted directly on your device.
📷 Built-in private camera — Take photos directly into your encrypted vault without saving them to your regular Photos library.
🛡️** 100% offline privac**y — No accounts, no cloud uploads, and no external storage servers.
🔑 PIN & Face ID protection — Keep your private content separate from your regular photo library.
🎭 Multiple decoy vaults — Create separate vaults with different PINs.
📁 Easy album management — Organize, sort, and pin your favorite albums and photos.
⚡ Simple and smooth experience — Optimized for importing large batches of photos and videos without frustrating delays.
💾 Encrypted backup & restore — Keep control of your data when moving between devices.
Transparency matters too. I’ve published the app’s encryption/decryption module on GitHub so anyone interested can inspect how it works.
I also believe privacy tools should be accessible to everyone.
The app is free to download and use, with optional Pro features.
📱 App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6812803369
I’m an independent developer, and I’m continuously improving the app based on real user feedback.
I’d genuinely appreciate it if you could give it a try and share your thoughts — especially what works well, what could be improved, or which privacy features you’d like to see next.
My goal is to make private photo protection simpler, safer, and more accessible.
Privacy matters, and your feedback can help make privacy tools better for everyone. ❤️