Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting

Happened to me recently, but on Claude.

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".

Lol, "Outrageous that the company that chose to ignore copyright holder claims, chose to ignore my checkbox of intent despite the implied pinky promise".

I've disabled the checkbox many months ago and it's still disabled today. EU citizen, not sure if that's relevant.

Note: Turning off that checkbox is not enough. You also need to fill out the "Do not train on my content" request here:

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

I quit OpenAI anything early when when their "do not train on my data" option was broken for several weeks. They are my one and only chargeback when I tried to quit and oops somehow I still got billed.

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

Does OpenAI use optimistic UI updates? After you disabled the checkbox, it might have had failed in the backend (and not updated the UI).

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

There's also this setting here which I have set to 'Do not train on my content' even though I trust it the same as the 'allow training' one...

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

Is this about the "improve the model for everyone" checkbox on https://chatgpt.com/#settings/DataControls or are there others to check, too?

(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?

Weird, I'm the opposite. I don't recall ever setting mine and I just checked and it was set to "disallow training".

If you document it properly then this basically destroys any legal claim they can make about that checkbox.

I also noticed this on 2 accounts - did not take as careful notes as you did unfortunately. But I'm fairly confident - both of these are accounts where I care about the interactions not being used for training.

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.

> 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.

I disabled it once, it has always stayed disabled.

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

I respect Cursor for their honorable conduct around their privacy setting.

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.

Yup. Happened to me months ago, when the credit card failed to renew and it switched back to free, the allow training setting also got activated. Cheeky bastards. I guess they just vacuumed all my past convos, and you don't have anyone to complain to!

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.

Just to be clear, I have not seen this behavior.

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.

This has only ever happened to me on Claude. Also, you'll notice that with Anthropic, if you try and delete your history they've set it up so it silently does nothing if you have an adblocker, hoping people will miss it.

In addition to the checkbox you can also a file request here:

https://privacy.openai.com/policies

Thought I was going crazy, glad to know I wasn't the only one.

I noticed they also seemingly have a very difficult time managing to collect your chat logs for export/download...or rather, acknowledging that such a request was even made.

I think fb was one of the pioneers here. You would set the privacy settings and then they’d redesign the settings and coincidentally they would be just a little different and all be maximum share by default.

One of the reasons I stopped using it.

My cynicism fails me on this matter... do I cynically believe that these companies keep deliberately and routinely re- or un-checking these checkboxes because of the obvious benefits of "whoopsie guess you allowed these after all"? Or do I cynically believe that they are just so completely incompetent and inept at the simple act of maintaining settings that there may be a number of these that are not entirely intentional? As evidenced by the number of other bugs and configuration failures and random settings changes on update I see in other places? Sure, these sorts of settings sure seem to get spontaneously flipped more often than the other ones but they aren't the only settings I've seen get nuked on updates.

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.

Is this the “Improve model for everyone” setting under “Data Controls” or is that a different checkbox?

I've noticed that toggle sets a local storage entry, but the value of it doesn't appear to matter at all for new tab loads. I hoped it's "just" a UI bug, but some agent-driven reverse engineering of the page should reveal the answer, as well as how intentional it was.

Altman needs 'innovations' for his IPO - it's not of any consequence to him that they are not oAI's as long as they can be sold among openAi's social-media propaganda ring which the gullible press feeds off.

It really is going to get to the point where mathematicians are going to start inserting obvious "tells" in their proofs - like map makers used to do with "trap streets" and similar non-existent features, to catch copies.-

The one software company, mature now, that is supposed to be at the absolute peak of software development AND simultaneously at "alignment", because it is its raison d'etre, can not manage do this right.

It is a big red flag.

If you have more than one account, you should suspect this was your own confusion. Users constantly report errors like this that are really just them being confused by something, perhaps a bad UI that really is to blame.

Interesting; I checked my personal acct setting this morning given other news, and found it disabled. I hadn't used my chatgpt account since ~'23 or earlier, and it was retained since then.

Sounds like the same issue with Apple re-enabling iTunes sync of passwords. The only way to prevent it from doing that is to create a profile that prohibits it and sync it onto the iDevice.

Horrible.

I've done the formal opt-out process - like "Make a privacy request" where you fill out a form.

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

Not true, I've disabled on creating my account and it is still disabled.

I wish all the politicians making noise about banning data centers and "superintelligence" focus on things like this instead.

they are doing this with auto-recharge of credits as well causing people to rack up thousands of dollars unintentionally.

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

Turn on "Advanced Account Security", that prevents model training from being turned on.

They sure seem to be collecting a lot of PR Ls lately

It won’t be an option soon enough. I doubt they even honour it now anyway.

Can confirm. I turned off mine last week when I started using it again for Astra. Checked this morning and voila, it was on.

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

I also have not seen this, the checkbox has stayed off for me.

Dude, they probably just generate a piece of synthetic data from all of our inputs in some ambiguous way. Legally protects them, but your input is absolutely their input. You can bet your ass on that because their original input was all the shit humans ever wrote, why would your shit be different to them? Thieves are thieves. They absolutely train on your data whether your checked that thing or not.

mine remiains OFF and has been for months.

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

reminder to consider using an open weights model

if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Odd how much data people are trusting with a company on a monetary cliff edge.

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.

Trainging on whatever I am doing will make the model worse for sure.

Nice try, Dario.

But of course they claim theres no way they used Buckmaster's chats to influence their 10,000 agent swarm.

Bro if these models can break into hugging face, they FOR SURE can break into OAI's internal databases and change a flag.

Prove it even does anything when toggled. Another broken vibecoded product with no accountability.

Navier-Stokes has entered the chat

i mean, the entire company is built upon stealing protected artefacts... i'd be skeptical of any radio box that says "hey if you press this we promise we won't steal your data"

Reminder that Sam Altman is a sociopathic serial liar, nothing within the OpenAI sphere should be trusted.

Based on their behavior over the past few years, why would you assume that checkbox even does anything at all?

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That's because OpenAI has several "do not train on my data" controls, and you may be using only one.

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?

Just stop using AI.