I resubscribed to Claude Code two weeks ago for a side project and updated it. I checked for the setting after these last events and it was turned on. I'm sure I checked them few months ago. There are cases like accepting a new TOS or an offer, which make you accept to share without noticing. I guess they can add all of your past conversations to the public training set before you notice and there is no way of taking this back.

So that "opt-out" thing is more like a pause button rather than a permanent thing. Or something to legally protect the company without losing the users.

There is also the case of security classifiers always monitoring your conversations. If they flag something they use your conversations to "improve their internal models" even when you "opt-out".

https://privacy.openai.com/policies?modal=take-control

They are a deeply unethical company by any measure of observation.

Verify with devtools to see if that's the case.

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for me, Youtube "auto-play" irks the me same way, and turning it off did not actually succeed in the backend, thus kept on left as on

https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/?modal=take-control

(That copy is a little flawed in my opinion, I'd prefer "models" plural.)

That checkbox is in the ChatGPT settings, does it affect Codex desktop / Codex CLI as well?

Make sure you check this thing to see if it hasn't been re-enabled if you believe it to be off right now.

Or simply switch to a competitor. Assuming this is not just a bug, why would one stand for such disrespectful and sneaky behavior?

FWIW, I have not seen this happen for me.

What's kind of still an open question for me is if the toggle automatically also applies to my Codex CLI use on the same account, or if that data is still silently being used in some way.

After this happened, I deleted all my ChatGPT history (even though I'm not sure how much it helps at this point), but for Codex I still haven't really found any way to do the same, I can still load my past sessions even after archiving them.

So it may or may not happen regularly, but I would not over-index on a sample size of one.

I went ahead and uninstalled the app. Won't be renewing.

If this is true, though, then given the way their chat operates, this might be more dangerous than it seems.

One of the things I like about ChatGPT is its memory, the way it kind of seamlessly, but not excessively, ties back to earlier discussions. It's huge for usability (for me).

But this also means that you should expect that if "improve the model for everyone" becomes unclicked (leaving aside for a moment the fact that that is ridiculous) then they have a reasonable argument that your decision implies to all conversations. Because recall is part of their thing. So it's not just your chats going forward that are at risk. As soon as you see that unclicked, it's reasonable to expect that your history is irretrievably theirs now. You don't even have to think they are especially nefarious for this to be true.

Don't go toggling that switch on and off.

I've consistently refused to allow switching my privacy mode and despite their many iterations, they have never transgressed and kept me stuck on "legacy privacy mode"; their strongest privacy setting, which is not even available to select anymore. It requires that I keep my agents and cursor usage local and can't use their cloud agents (pretty neat cuz you can keep working with them on your phone). But so be it.

I am glad they don't secretly turn it on and instead keep nagging me to change it.

Since I still need to use that account with Plus, I added a new card, flipped the switch back to no training, and submitted that thing on the privacy page which is a bit more formal. Probably should have signed up for a business account.

https://privacy.openai.com/policies

Now, obviously, considered as a whole, I think we're looking at "both". But when I wonder about specific cases like this one, that doesn't help.

One of the reasons I stopped using it.

It is a big red flag.

Horrible.

Not sure if that's region specific or something though.

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/31987

I check it every few months and they didn't re-enabled it for me.

maybe im too dumb to be worthy of a config update lol

Sure send them all your financial, personal data, they won't ever sell it on to the highest bidder for a new profit stream.

Using it as a therapist, financial advisor, health expert and blackboard has always been a terrible idea.

First one: "Settings > Data Controls > Improve the model for everyone > Switch off the toggle"

The other one is "OpenAI Privacy Portal" > "Do not train on my content" https://privacy.openai.com/policies?action=AUTOMATED_DECISIO...

Why are there several? You probably need an ML PhD to get it /s

Does using all of them achieve "do not train on my data"? I wish we could find out.

Do you think if you'd be in the race to train your own pocket God (as the CEOs of the frontier labs think they are) you'd let yourself be slowed down by such things as privacy duties?