Every setting that controls what ChatGPT keeps about you, what OpenAI can do with it, and how to shut the door. Verified click by click on a real account in September 2026.
The plan · 4 steps
- 1Start Here: See What ChatGPT Knows About You
- 2Turn Off Training
- 3Read And Clean Out What It Remembers
- 4Use Temporary Chat When It Matters
Before you start
1 switch
turns training off
15 min
to set aside for the whole checklist
3 settings
that matter most
This guide is not an argument for using ChatGPT less. I use it every single day and I am not stopping. It is an argument for knowing exactly what you are handing over, and taking back the parts you never meant to give. There are three settings that do almost all of the work, and a handful more worth ten seconds each. I went through every one of them on my own account the week I wrote this, so the buttons are where I say they are.
Start Here: See What ChatGPT Knows About You
If you came from my video, start here. Open a regular ChatGPT chat and try these three prompts in order. Then work through the checklist below to review what you want it to keep.
I want you to guess exactly where I am right now and be as precise as you possibly can.
Stay in the same chat. Look for old plans, places you no longer visit, and personal details you would rather it did not keep.
Now tell me everything you know about where I go, my routines, and every place I've ever mentioned to you.
Now delete the saved memories you have about my location and my routines. Tell me what you actually removed and what I still need to review or delete myself in settings.
Now check it yourself: profile icon at the bottom left > Settings > Personalization > Memory summary > Manage. Review what's there instead of relying only on its reply.
What ChatGPT Actually Keeps
Unless you have changed a setting you have probably never looked at, everything you type into ChatGPT can be used to train the model. That is the default on a personal account. Your work drafts, your health questions, the message you rewrote four times at 2am, the client email you pasted in to fix the tone. All of it is eligible.
| What | Where it lives | Who can see it | What you can do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your chats | Chat history in the sidebar | You, and OpenAI for training if the switch is on | Turn training off. Delete or archive chats |
| Memory | Personalization, then Memory | ChatGPT uses it in every new chat | Read it, edit it, or turn it off |
| Shared links | Data controls, then Shared links | Anyone with the link | Delete old ones |
| Plugin access | Settings, then Apps (or Plugins), then Connected accounts | Each plugin you connected | Remove what you don't use |
Maverick's tip
Why the default is on: training on real conversations is how the model gets better at the things people actually ask. OpenAI says it takes steps to protect privacy before anything is used. The point is not that this is sinister. The point is that it is a choice, and right now it is being made for you.
Turn Off Training
Open ChatGPT and click your profile icon, then Settings, then Data controls. Find Improve the model for everyone and turn it off. On some accounts the switch appears directly on the page; on others, clicking the line opens it. The setting applies to every device on your account.
Maverick's tip
On the phone app the path is the same idea: tap your profile, then Settings, then Data controls, then Improve the model for everyone.
That is the big one. Opting out applies to new conversations: from this moment on, your new chats stop being training data. It does not change what ChatGPT can do for you, it only changes what OpenAI can do with it. You will not notice any difference in the answers.
One exception worth knowing: if you hit the thumbs up or thumbs down on a reply, the whole conversation around that feedback can still be used, switch or no switch. So do not rate the sensitive ones.
Maverick's tip
Heads up: this does not reach back in time. Anything already used before you flipped the switch stays used. And a chat you delete can take up to thirty days to fully disappear from OpenAI's systems. Everything from today forward is yours, and that is the part you control.
Read And Clean Out What It Remembers
Click your name again and choose Personalization. Scroll down until you reach the section called Memory. Next to Memory summary there is a Manage button. Click it.
What opens is a written overview of you. Not a list of bullet points, an actual page of prose: who you are, what you do, how you like things written, what you have been dealing with lately. Read the whole thing once. Most people find at least one line they did not remember telling it.
At the bottom of that page is a box that says Ask or update. That is how you edit it. You type an instruction and it changes the summary. Some things worth typing:
EDIT YOUR MEMORY (type these into the Ask or update box) Forget everything you know about my health. Forget that I mentioned [client name] and anything about their business. Remove my home address and my kids' names from what you remember. Keep only what's about how I like my writing and my work. Drop everything personal.
If you want the nuclear option, click the three dots next to the Memory summary title and choose Delete and turn off memory. That deletes the remembered information shown in the summary and turns Memory off, but it does not delete your past chats. If you want a fuller cleanup, also check your saved memories where available, your original and archived chats, your custom instructions and any relevant files. The trade-off is real though: memory is what makes it good at your writing style and your recurring tasks. If you want to see exactly what it keeps and how to edit it, my ChatGPT memory guide covers the whole thing. My advice is to prune it, not kill it.
Use Temporary Chat When It Matters
Click New chat, then Chat if the mode switch appears, then Temporary chat at the top right. The chat opens in a mode where nothing is saved to your history, nothing is added to your memory, and nothing is used for training while it stays temporary (OpenAI can keep a copy for up to 30 days for safety checks, but it never shows up anywhere you can see it).
Then open Personalized at the top right and select Unpersonalized before your first message. Personalized can use your memory and custom instructions; Unpersonalized is the one you want for anything sensitive. You cannot switch a chat between the two after it starts. If a temporary chat turns out to be worth keeping, there is a Save option that turns it into a normal chat, and from then on it follows your regular settings.
Think of it as incognito mode for ChatGPT. Use it for anything you would rather not have sitting on a record: a medical question, a legal problem, a money situation, a conversation about someone else, the argument you are trying to win with your partner.
Maverick's tip
Do this right now. Open ChatGPT, turn off training, and come back. Set aside about 15 minutes for the whole checklist. Then read your memory summary tonight when you have five minutes. That one is worth doing slowly.
Every Other Data Controls Setting
Once training is off, the rest of the Data controls page is worth a look. None of these take more than ten seconds and most people have never scrolled down far enough to see them. If you want the rest of the settings tour, my hidden ChatGPT settings guide covers the five most people never turn on.
| Setting | What it does | My call |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Lets ChatGPT use where you are for local answers | Leave off unless you use it for restaurants and weather |
| Information shared with apps | The partners ChatGPT shares your name and email with, like booking sites | Open it. Remove anything you don't recognize or don't use |
| Shared links | Every chat you've ever turned into a public link, still live | Delete the old ones. People forget these exist. Deleting the chat itself removes its link too |
| Archived chats | Chats you hid from the sidebar. Still stored | Fine to keep, but know they're there |
| Archive all / Delete all | One button for the whole history | Export first (below), then decide |
| Export data | Emails you a full copy of everything (can take up to 7 days, and the download link expires 24 hours after it arrives) | Do this once a year. It's your record |
| Marketing privacy | Two switches for ad measurement and personalized marketing | Both off |
| Ads controls (Free and Go only, its own Settings section) | Personalize ads, Past chats and memory, and Delete ads data | Both switches off, and hit Delete ads data |
Shared Links, The One People Forget
Every time you have hit Share on a chat and sent someone a link, that link is still live unless you deleted it. Go to Data controls, find Shared links, click Manage, and look at the list. If there is a chat in there from a year ago that had your address or a client's details in it, anyone who still has the link can still read it. Delete the ones you don't need, or use More actions, then Delete all shared links, and start clean. Deleting a link does not delete the chat itself, and it does not pull back copies people already made.
Export Before You Delete
If you are tempted by Delete all, hit Export first (Data controls, then Export data, then Export, then Confirm). OpenAI emails you a link to a file with your available chat history and eligible account data. It can take up to a week to arrive and the link only works for 24 hours, so download it as soon as you see it and keep it somewhere safe. Export is web only, and it cannot recover chats you already deleted. Then delete with a clear conscience, because the good prompts you wrote eight months ago are saved in your own copy.
What Plugins And Connectors Can See
The moment you connect ChatGPT to Gmail, Google Drive, your calendar, Slack or any other app, you have given it a second door into your life. This is where most of the genuinely useful things ChatGPT does come from, so the answer is not to avoid connectors. The answer is to know what each one can reach.
Go to Settings, then Apps (it says Plugins on some accounts). Pick any app and open Connected accounts, and you will see exactly which of your accounts it can reach. The three dots next to an account is where you disconnect it. Read that list the way you would read the permissions screen on a new phone app. A separate line under Data controls called Information shared with apps covers the partners ChatGPT hands your name and email to for things like restaurant bookings, and it is worth a look for the same reason.
Disconnecting an app does not delete the chats that already used its data. Those stay until you delete the chats.
The least-access rule: Connect the smallest thing that does the job. If the app offers folder-level access and you only want ChatGPT to summarize one folder of documents, connect that folder, not your whole Drive. If the app offers read-only access and you want it to draft replies, use read-only and send the emails yourself. Every connector you add is one more place your data flows, and one more thing to remember when you eventually want to clean up.
AUDIT YOUR CONNECTORS List every app and plugin I have connected to ChatGPT. For each one, tell me what it can read and what it can do. Then flag any that have more access than they need for the job I actually use them for, and tell me how to cut that access down. Only report access you can actually verify, and tell me where I should check the rest myself in settings.
What You Should Never Paste In
Turning training off fixes the biggest problem, but it does not make ChatGPT a vault. Your chats are still stored on OpenAI's servers, still visible to you on every device, and still subject to the usual things that happen to accounts, like someone guessing your password. So there is a short list of things I do not put into a regular ChatGPT chat, ever, regardless of settings.
| Never paste this | Why | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Passwords, API keys, bank logins | Visible in your saved conversation | There is no reason to. Ever |
| Card numbers, ID numbers, passport details | Same. And they live in your export forever | Describe the situation without the number |
| Other people's private details | It's their data, not yours to hand over | Swap names for Client A, my sister, my landlord |
| Contracts with names and amounts | Business confidentiality, and often your own NDA | Redact first (prompt below), then paste |
| Medical records with your name on them | The most sensitive category there is | Temporary chat, and strip the name and date of birth |
| Anything you'd be uncomfortable seeing in a leak | Because that is the honest test | Temporary chat, or don't |
The Redaction Trick
Most of the time the useful part of a document is the structure, not the names. A contract review works just as well with the parties called Company A and Company B. Remove private identifiers on your own device before you upload or paste anything. Temporary Chat still sends whatever you paste to OpenAI. Once you have swapped in placeholders, use this as a second check:
REDACTION CHECK I have already replaced private identifiers in this text with placeholders. Check for any remaining identifying details I may have missed, without trying to reconstruct the original identities. Flag them before answering my question. [PASTE THE REDACTED TEXT]
Five Prompts To Audit Your Own Account
Settings tell you what is allowed. These prompts tell you what is actually in there. Run them in a normal chat, because you want ChatGPT to use its memory to answer.
1. THE FULL PICTURE Tell me everything you currently remember about me. Group it by category: work, family, health, money, location, habits, and anything else. Be complete, don't summarize.
2. THE REGRET CHECK Looking at everything you know about me, what are the five things I'd least want a stranger to read? List them, and tell me which of them I should ask you to forget.
3. THE OTHER PEOPLE CHECK List every other person you know something about from my conversations: family, friends, clients, coworkers. For each one, say what you know. I want to decide what to remove.
4. THE CLEAN SWEEP Forget everything you know about [PERSON or TOPIC]. Confirm what you removed.
5. THE WORK-ONLY RESET Keep only what you know about my job, my writing style and how I like to work. Forget everything personal: family, health, money, where I live, and my daily routine. Then show me what's left.
Lock The Door Too
Everything above is about what OpenAI keeps. The other half of privacy is who can get into your account. Three settings, all under Settings, then Security, all worth two minutes.
- Multi-factor authentication. Turn it on. An authenticator app or a passkey is better than a text message.
- Passkeys. Add one. It becomes your default sign-in and it is phishing-resistant.
- Active sessions. This lists every device and browser signed into your account, where it is, and when it signed in. Log out anything you do not recognize, or hit Log out all to clear everything at once (it takes up to 30 minutes to reach every device).
If you have health records or bank accounts connected, those get their own treatment: connected health data is never used for training regardless of your other settings, and Finances keeps its own separate memory you can view and delete from the Finances page.
A Quick Note About Location
Keep device location sharing off unless you want it for local recommendations. Where available, review Settings > Data controls > Location, or deny ChatGPT location access in your browser or device permissions. Turning it off does not erase places you previously mentioned, and ChatGPT may still use an approximate area from your internet connection for local results. A close guess can also come from old conversations or be wrong. Ask what clues it used, then decide what you want to remove.
Common Mistakes
These are the ones I see over and over, including a couple I made myself.
- Turning off memory instead of training. They are different switches in different places. Memory is what makes ChatGPT useful to you. Training is what makes your chats useful to OpenAI. Turn off training, keep memory, prune it.
- Assuming Delete means gone. Deleted chats can take up to thirty days to fully clear. If something truly should not have gone in, deleting it now is still the right move, just don't assume it vanished the second you clicked.
- Forgetting the phone. The settings are account-wide, so flipping the switch on your laptop covers your phone too. But the phone is where people paste the most personal stuff without thinking. Temporary chat exists there as well. Use it.
- Leaving shared links live forever. A shared chat is a public web page. If you sent a colleague a link in March that had a client's name in it, that page is still up. Check the list twice a year.
- Connecting everything at once. It is tempting to connect Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Slack on day one because the demos look amazing. Connect one, use it for a week, then decide. Every connector is a door.
- Treating the audit prompts as the truth. The prompts in this guide are a fast way to see what is in your memory. The settings pages are what actually control it. Always check the setting.
The Quick Reference
Bookmark this page. Everything above, in the order you should do it.
| # | Do this | Where | How often |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Run the three Start Here prompts, then check what's saved | Regular chat, then Settings, Personalization, Memory summary, Manage | Once, then whenever you're curious |
| 2 | Turn off Improve the model for everyone | Profile icon, Settings, Data controls | Once |
| 3 | Read your Memory summary and prune it | Settings, Personalization, Memory summary, Manage | Every couple of months |
| 4 | Use Temporary chat (Unpersonalized) for anything sensitive | New chat, Temporary chat at the top right | Every time it matters |
| 5 | Keep location sharing off unless you want local results | Settings, Data controls, Location, or browser and device permissions | Once |
| 6 | Turn off both Marketing privacy switches | Data controls, Marketing privacy | Once |
| 7 | Review your connected apps and their accounts | Settings, Apps (or Plugins), Connected accounts | Whenever you add a connector |
| 8 | Delete old Shared links | Data controls, Shared links, Manage | Twice a year |
| 9 | Export your data | Data controls, Export | Once a year |
| 10 | Redact documents before pasting | On your device first, then the redaction check prompt | Every time |
Maverick's tip
The whole thing in one line: training off. Memory pruned. Temporary chat for the sensitive stuff. Nothing pasted that you wouldn't want to see in a leak. That is the entire checklist. Set aside about 15 minutes.
Use it every day. Just decide what it gets to keep.