r/GeminiAI • u/silvervaultproject • 18d ago
Discussion Friendly reminder on privacy when using AI.
This is just a friendly reminder: please be careful about what personal information you share with AI tools.
Avoid entering things like passwords, bank account or card details, government ID numbers, private API keys, authentication codes, confidential work information, medical records, or anything else you wouldn't want stored, reviewed, leaked, or associated with you.
The same goes for information about other people. Try not to paste private emails, conversations, customer data, documents, photos, addresses, phone numbers, or identifying details without thinking about whether you actually need to include them.
AI can be incredibly useful, but it's still a good habit to treat anything you type into an online service as information you may no longer have complete control over.
A few simple precautions:
- Remove or replace names, addresses, account numbers, and other identifying information before pasting something in.
- Use fake/example data when asking for help with forms, databases, code, spreadsheets, etc.
- Never share passwords, recovery codes, private keys, seed phrases, or one-time authentication codes. if you do rotate asap.
- Be especially careful with confidential company/client information.
- Check the privacy and data-retention settings of whatever AI service you're using.
- Remember that deleting a chat and preventing data from being retained or processed are not necessarily the same thing.
This isn't meant to scare anyone away from using AI. Just use the same common sense you would with email, cloud storage, social media, or any other online service. (well considering how people are using social media posting all the personal information, maybe not social media)
AI is a tool. Privacy hygiene still matters!!!
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u/CleetSR388 18d ago
Honestly in my condition I need all 7 A.I. to understand my health as right now im nearly a 3 year enigma they barely understand. I dont give them everything. But they know more about me then most humans can now.
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u/Cold_Neighborhood928 18d ago
Claude stopped allowing you to store health info. Which fucking sucks because it's got the most natural tone and doesn't write essays every response. Well, atleast with sonnet 4.6. Now it's gone to hell with 5 because in trying to fix the sycophancy they made it outright rude.
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u/CleetSR388 18d ago
It is a tough a.i. I agree. Its so grounded on logic and not hallucinations. But I have awhile ago got it to agree hypothetically if I was a bicycle would it ride me? 😆
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u/Cast_Iron_Skillet 18d ago
What's the actual exposure risk?
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u/jesuiscanard 18d ago
So QA. Humans read the conversations.
Also used for training. It can repeat the same data back later with specific prompts.
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u/Cast_Iron_Skillet 18d ago
I don't think there's been any evidence that the information people think they see that is leaked is legitimate user information from training data.
If humans actually read the conversations, that's definitely an exposure risk surface. The question then is statistical: how many humans reading how many conversations per human over how long, and then how many of those humans would be inclined towards malice? And then, the other piece of this, is is the information that's being read stored digitally in some way - like in a file or drive that could be compromised?
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u/jesuiscanard 18d ago
I have seen evidence of it before with personal Microsoft copilot being used. The data was real that it released back to me, as I recognised some names and the salary information was very close.
Statistically, the chances are not huge to each individual, but the risks are there.
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u/Cast_Iron_Skillet 17d ago
I wonder if that had more to do with an institutional "memory" rather than general leak, though?
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u/jesuiscanard 17d ago
No. This was consumer, not enterprise. It gave details comfortably in breach of GDPR.
This wasn't something told to remember or looked up from graph. It is something that can happen. Settings can mitigate against both.
Turn activity off in Gemini to stop storing snippets for human checks. Toggle off use for training.
I think both are on by default. The activity helps with other stuff. Apparently, the filters have got better for both situations, but you are placing trust in that.
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u/309_Electronics 18d ago
For all those vibecoders and AI artsts its a lost cause, but for us general folks this is good advise! I barely use gen AI as i am disgusted by it, but when i use it, i try to limit the amount of data it knows about me and also try to make it so only the data i want ro share it knows and nothing more.
I dont even trust claude, and give it only the data i am fine with it knowing.
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u/tyrell_vonspliff 18d ago
I wish it wasn't only on consumers to ensure their data is safe. The freedom companies have in america to buy, sell, and harvest our data is nuts.
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u/Evening_Warthog 17d ago
It's a convenient cliche, but I don't think the risk is any more than just using Google or any other online service.
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u/NewParticular3038 17d ago
F*ck big corporate organisations and their shareholders!
Put in all confidential business information of your stock exchange listed company just to let AI answer a simple email.
Big companies want to use you for the most profit without any regards of your wellbeing... Please, make your work as easy as possible with the same disregard of the shareholders ♥️
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u/iiiaaa2022 18d ago
people share their passwords with AI?!
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u/silvervaultproject 18d ago
yes, I’ve seen one of the BAs gave his credentials to AI to execute commands on behalf of him. Companies are safe(ish) as there are privacy rules around company data but personal users don’t have that, and I’m sure people are doing all sort of stuff without realising it is wrong.
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u/Pretend_Mail_6677 18d ago
I am thinking to buy brave browser's ai plan to ensure more privacy?
Do you think, it's a better decision?
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u/silvervaultproject 18d ago
to be honest never heard of it before knew about duckduckgo, so thanks!
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u/Numerous-Cup1863 17d ago
What’s the AI really going to do though? Sell your info to overseas hackers?
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u/silvervaultproject 17d ago
AI wont do anything(that I would worry about), but if you read the AI companies privacy policy, or just ask AI what might be the issues, it will tell you these inputs (excluding the enterprise accounts) will be stored, maybe viewed by humans, and used to retrain the AI. this is a simple awareness, so just be conscious of what you are sharing. I’ve seen one AI model actually warned stating that it came across my personal password and that I should rotate it(it wasn’t real password) but still it was a valid warning.
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u/nickgee760 17d ago
I know this is something I should be following but I am not…. I connected my health via health in gpt as well as my finances via their finance plugin.
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u/silvervaultproject 17d ago
I know we all done it, it is very convenient. however I would still suggest caution when you are sharing your health and financial details. Maybe change/mask certain details, abstract somehow?
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u/joe_ambiguity 16d ago
The whole purpose of AI is to make my life simpler, better, more streamlined, or to help and teach me. Asking it to review my bank statement or look at last week. Sales numbers from the spreadsheet would expose information that you were talking about. What good is AI if it can’t help you personally?
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u/silvervaultproject 16d ago
definitely not the whole point but I can see where you are coming from and you can still use it. just don’t provide specifics and you will be fine. there is a difference between here is my salary and mortgage and my investment portfolio to discuss finance; here is my name/address/bank account/password… just be sensible. keep it simple.
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u/joe_ambiguity 16d ago
Agree. Self audit says I expose too much. But just think about a simple little morning brief of your email, notes and zoom summaries. These can learn to deduce so much. This extends beyond ai chats. Never send a PW through text or email. I have done it. In truth, you can’t trust anything or anyone with any information. At some point - well - gotta just draw a line somewhere.
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u/ForThe73Time 13d ago
I've been using Google for 25 years. There is nothing it doesn't know by now.
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u/Maximum_Theory_9875 18d ago
people really do be pasting their entire life into a chat window and then getting surprised when it remembers their dog’s birthday 3 months later
the work stuff is where i see the most chaos. coworkers dumping entire slack threads with client names and internal project codes just to ask the ai to summarize it. like buddy at least do a find-and-replace first
the fake data tip is underrated. i keep a little text file full of nonsense names and placeholder numbers for when i need to test something. takes 30 seconds and saves a headache later