I’ve been telling you all to stop sharing your private information with ChatGPT for the past three years.
Some of you listened.
Some of you did not.
Well, this might be your final warning.
Let’s just say OpenAI had a very rough and very not-private week last week.
And not the “oops, we moved a button, and everyone got a bit mad” kind of rough. We are talking lawsuits, Canadian privacy regulators, potential bank account connections, and courtroom questions about whether AI chats and digital journals can become evidence.
Before the OpenAI defense squad starts warming up their keyboards, yes, some of this is still alleged. Courts still need to sort parts of this out. I am not a lawyer, thankfully, and this article is not legal advice. If you’re looking for legal advice, ask your attorney.
But the bigger point is simple: stop treating ChatGPT like your diary, therapist, lawyer, accountant, confessional booth, and emotionally available robot best friend.
This is your final warning.
Let’s party like it’s 1984.
OpenAI’s Recent Privacy Meltdown Explained
OpenAI is getting hit hard from multiple angles right now.
A new class action lawsuit claims ChatGPT user prompts and identifiers were shared with Google and Meta through tracking tools. Canadian privacy regulators say OpenAI’s original ChatGPT training process did not comply with Canadian privacy laws. OpenAI also just rolled out a personal finance feature that lets ChatGPT connect to bank accounts through Plaid.
That timing is not great.
It is kind of like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, then announcing a new service where everyone mails you their wallet.
Again, I still use ChatGPT and Codex. ChatGPT is still unbelievably useful. It is probably still the best AI product for a lot of tasks.
But useful does not mean private. Let’s crack into everything that’s gone on over the past week.
1. OpenAI Lawsuit Claims Your ChatGPT Conversations Were Shared with Google and Meta
A new class action lawsuit, Couture v. OpenAI Global, LLC, was filed on May 13, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The lawsuit claims OpenAI used tracking tools like Meta Pixel and Google Analytics on ChatGPT.com, allegedly sending ChatGPT query data and identifiers to Meta and Google without proper consent.
The allegation is not just “OpenAI collected data.”
We already knew OpenAI collects data. That is in the privacy policy.
The nastier allegation is that OpenAI is sharing user chat queries and identifying information like emails and user IDs with Google and Meta.
As for Google and Meta… as we know, they are the poster children of privacy violations.
To be clear, this is still a lawsuit claim. It has not been proven in court.
But it’s still a damning story for OpenAI, and I personally wouldn’t doubt for a second that it’s true.
2. OpenAI Didn’t Respect Canadian Privacy Law When It Trained ChatGPT
Canada also entered the chat(GPT).
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced on May 6, 2026, that a joint investigation by Canadian federal and provincial privacy regulators found privacy problems with how OpenAI initially developed and deployed ChatGPT. Regulators concluded that the way OpenAI initially trained ChatGPT was not compliant with their privacy laws.
The Canadian regulators flagged several issues, including overcollection of personal information, lack of valid consent and transparency, factual inaccuracies involving personal information, problems with access, correction, and deletion rights, and lack of accountability for personal information under OpenAI’s control.
In normal human language, Canada basically said:
“Hey, you trained this thing on a ton of personal information, and you did not have enough guardrails around that process.”
That is not a small issue.
AI companies love to talk about innovation. They love to talk about safety. They love to talk about building tools for humanity while somehow also building $200 per month subscription plans.
But privacy is not an annoying detail. It is the entire deal.
If a model was trained on scraped personal information without enough safeguards, the problem is not just what you type into ChatGPT today. It is also what may have been swallowed by the training process years ago.
That is why this Canadian finding matters.
3. OpenAI Wants ChatGPT to See Your Bank Account
And now, ChatGPT wants to connect to your bank account.
Yes, really. I doubt they planned for this kind of timing, though.
OpenAI announced a new personal finance experience in ChatGPT on May 15, 2026. It is currently available in preview for ChatGPT Pro users ($200/month) in the U.S., with support for more than 12,000 financial institutions through Plaid. OpenAI says ChatGPT can access balances, transactions, investments, and liabilities, but cannot see full account numbers or make changes to accounts.
The Next Web covered it here: OpenAI Wants ChatGPT to See Your Bank Account.
OpenAI says users can disconnect accounts, and synced financial data will be deleted from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days. But OpenAI also says disconnecting an account does not remove financial information from ChatGPT conversation history, so users still need to delete individual conversations if they shared financial details there.
This is where I get off the ride.
I understand why people want this. It could be very useful.
Would I connect my bank account to ChatGPT right now?
Absolutely not.
Your financial data is one of the most private data categories left. It shows what you buy, where you go, who you pay, what you owe, what you earn, what you fear, what you hide, and what kind of dumb subscription you forgot to cancel 19 months ago.
Financial data shows your behavior in this crazy world.
And this is coming during the same week when OpenAI is dealing with a privacy lawsuit about alleged sharing with Google and Meta.
The timing is almost impressively bad.
Again, OpenAI says the feature has controls. Plaid says users decide what to share and can manage access.
Okay.
But I do not want my bank account sitting anywhere near a chatbot unless there is a very strong reason, a very strong legal framework, and a very clear reason why I cannot do the same thing somewhere else or on my own.
For me, that answer is no. Your opinion may vary.
4. Newly Released Diary Entries in Musk-OpenAI Case Fuel Questions About AI Privacy
This one is a little different, but it belongs in the same conversation.
American Bazaar reported that newly admissible diary entries in the Musk-OpenAI case are raising questions about AI privacy and digital evidence. The article says OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman’s personal digital diary became a focus in the case, with entries reportedly used to discuss OpenAI’s early years, internal tensions, and the company’s move toward a for-profit structure.
The bigger point is not really about Musk, Altman, or Brockman.
The bigger point is that personal digital records can become courtroom material.
American Bazaar also notes that legal experts have warned chatbot interactions may not have the same protections as conversations with lawyers, therapists, or doctors, and that AI chats and digital journals can potentially be requested during legal discovery.
That should make everyone pause for at least three seconds. I’ll wait for the pause to be over.
People are using AI tools for therapy-like conversations, marriage and divorce advice, legal questions, business planning, financial confessions, spiritual crises, and “please help me understand how I ruined my life” sessions.
But ChatGPT is not your lawyer, therapist, priest, or doctor.
And unless the law changes, you should not assume your AI chats receive the same protections as those professional conversations.
That does not mean every ChatGPT conversation is going to show up in court. Over 99% of them never will. Do not panic and throw your laptop into a lake.
It means you should stop using cloud AI tools as if they were protected journals.
Because they are not.
What You Can Do to Protect Yourself and Your AI Privacy
You do not need to stop using ChatGPT.
I am not stopping and will continue to use ChatGPT and Codex constantly.
But I do not treat them like a locked safe.
Here is the best approach, in my opinion.
1. Stop Sharing Sensitive Information with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Similar Public AI Tools
This includes, but is not limited to:
- Names
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Passwords
- API keys
- Tax documents
- Bank statements
- Medical records
- Legal documents
- Private client data
- Confidential business plans
- Personal drama you would not want to read in court
- Anything involving children
- Anything involving therapy-like conversations
- Anything involving sex, health, lawsuits, money, or identity
You can still ask useful questions. Just remove the sensitive details.
Instead of:
“My employee, Dick Smith, at 123 Main Street in Detroit, is being sued for indecent exposure…”
Use:
“My employee is being sued for indecent exposure…”
Or better:
“Here is a fictional version of a legal situation. Explain the general issue.”
That one change cuts a lot of risk.
2. Use Temporary Chats and Configure Privacy Settings
OpenAI says Temporary Chats are automatically deleted from OpenAI systems within 30 days and do not appear in your history. It also says chats are saved until deleted, and files uploaded in conversations are managed separately from chats, meaning deleting a chat does not necessarily delete the file from your Library.
So, use the privacy settings.
Turn off model training where available. Use Temporary Chat when you do not need history. Delete sensitive chats and extraneous files from your Library. Enable multifactor authentication.
It’s not perfect, but it is better than raw-dogging the internet with your entire life story.
3. Do Not Connect Your Bank Account Unless You Have a Very Strong Reason
This is the easiest advice in the entire article.
Do not connect your bank account to ChatGPT just because the button exists.
If you absolutely must test it, use caution. Disconnect when done. Delete related conversations. Delete financial memories. Review permissions in Plaid. Check what data was shared.
But my personal recommendation is simple:
Do not do it.
Rather than handing your financial data to an AI company, stick to your bank app, a spreadsheet, a trusted budgeting tool, or even just a calculator and a chair.
Your bank account does not need to become another input field for an AI company.
4. Use Venice for More Private AI chats
Venice is one of the better options if privacy matters to you.
Venice says your conversation history stays on your device and that Venice does not store it on its servers. Its privacy architecture page also says Venice does not store or log prompts or model responses on its servers.
That is a very different setup from the major AI platforms.
Is Venice perfect? No online service is perfect. If your browser, device, account, or local storage is compromised, that is still a problem. Also, different model modes can have different privacy tradeoffs, so you should understand what mode you are using.
But for private AI conversations, Venice is a strong option.
You can also get 20% off Venice Pro for a limited time with promo code RUNTHE20.
Disclosure: I am a Venice affiliate and may earn a commission if you buy through my link. That does not change my opinion. Privacy still matters. I’ve been using Venice every day since 2024.
5. Run a Local AI Model on Your Own Machine
If you want more control and even more privacy, run AI locally.
Tools like LM Studio and Ollama let you run models on your own computer. LM Studio says it lets users run AI models locally and privately, while Google’s Gemma 4 is designed to run on everyday devices like phones, laptops, and tablets.
This is not as easy as opening ChatGPT, but it is getting easier.
You can try models like:
- Llama
- Gemma
- Qwen
- Mistral
- DeepSeek
- Minimax
Your results depend on your hardware. A powerful desktop will do better than a sad little laptop that starts screaming when you open 12 Chrome tabs.
Also, local does not mean invisible. Your computer may still store things locally on your machine, like files, logs, downloads, and prompt history, depending on the app. But at least you are not sending every sensitive thought to a cloud AI company by default.
6. Read and Follow ChatGPT Privacy Best Practices
I already wrote a full guide on ChatGPT privacy best practices, and yes, I know privacy is not the sexiest topic.
People would rather read about wild AI image prompts or jailbreaks than settings menus. I get it.
But this stuff matters a lot, and hopefully, this article is convincing you of that.
Wrapping It Up
OpenAI is not dead. ChatGPT is not useless. AI is not canceled.
You’ll still be okay.
But this OpenAI privacy meltdown should be a wake-up call to everyone.
A lawsuit claims OpenAI shared ChatGPT prompts and identifiers with Google and Meta through tracking tools. Canadian regulators say OpenAI’s original ChatGPT training process did not respect privacy law. OpenAI now wants some users to connect financial accounts through Plaid. And digital records, including diaries and potentially AI chats, are becoming part of courtroom fights.
That is a lot.
The answer is not panic. The answer is discipline.
Also, tell me what you think in the comment section below. Are you still using ChatGPT the same way, or did this privacy meltdown change how you use it?
Until next time, remember to run the prompts and prompt the planet.
Tired of AI filters and data-harvesting in tools like ChatGPT? Try Venice today, built for more creative freedom and privacy. Get 20% off any paid Venice subscription for a limited time with promo code RUNTHE20. Disclosure: This is an affiliate link, and I may earn a commission if you purchase.
