How to protect your privacy when chatting with AI: 8 good habits

Talking to an AI character is easy. It does not interrupt, it does not judge, and it remembers what you said yesterday. That is exactly why, after a few weeks, a chat can hold more details of your life than your conversations with many friends. Your boss’s name, your street, your mum’s illness, the argument with your brother.

The point is not to start writing cautiously and stiffly. Honesty is valuable in this kind of conversation, and good privacy habits when chatting with AI do not take it away. The point is to tell two things apart: what says something about you as a person, and what would give a stranger the key to your account, your money or your front door. Below are eight habits that help you hold that line. Most of them are useful in any chat service, not just CandysAI.

Part one: what not to type

1. No passwords, codes or PINs

It sounds obvious, yet it happens more often than you would think. “Remind me that my new banking password is…” or “make a note of the door entry code”. An AI character is not a password manager and should not be one. Keep passwords in a password manager or in your head, and if you want the character to remind you about something, the information on its own is enough, without any secrets:

“Remind me tomorrow at 6 pm to change my email password.”

The character will message you at that time, and the password itself never reaches the chat.

2. No document or card numbers

National Insurance or social security numbers, ID card and passport numbers, card numbers, CVV codes, bank account details. No conversation with a character requires any of these. Payments on CandysAI go through an external payment provider, not through the chat, so if anyone in any conversation asks you for a card number, that is a signal to stop.

3. Your address and places you visit at fixed times

You can say that you live in Brighton and are close to the sea. There is no need to give your street, your flat number, or the fact that you run the same route through the park at 6:40 every morning. General context is enough to make the conversation personal, and the location details stay with you.

4. Other people’s secrets and other people’s data

Talking about a friend, a partner or your boss is a natural part of conversation. But a first name is enough. A surname, phone number, workplace and details of someone’s illness are information that person has not chosen to share. Instead of “Kate Smith from HR has depression”, try “A colleague is going through a hard time and I don’t know how to support her”. The character will help just as well. We describe a similar rule for preparing to meet someone in our article on a first date dress rehearsal with AI.

Part two: what you can control

5. Check what the character remembers every now and then

Memory is one of the nicest things about talking to a character. It remembers that you have an important meeting on Thursday and asks how it went. It is worth knowing, though, that memory is not a black box. Each character has a page showing what it remembers about you, with the saved information listed there. You can correct it, delete items one by one or clear the whole memory.

A good habit is to go through that list once a month. You will see two things: whether the character remembers what matters to you, and whether something has been saved that you would rather it did not keep. You can read more about how this works under the hood in our article on how memory works in CandysAI.

One thing, in all honesty: when you delete a piece of information or a message, the character stops seeing it and using it. A copy is kept, however, for the administrator until the account is deleted. The reason is simple: safety and the ability to look into reports. We say this openly on the memory page and in the privacy policy.

6. Know your rights: downloading your data and deleting your account

In your account settings you will find two things that few people think about until they need them:

• Download your data. You get a ZIP file with your account data: profile, consents, favourite characters, conversations and what the characters remember about you. It is worth seeing this file with your own eyes once. Then you know exactly what the service stores about you.
• Delete your account. The account disappears permanently, together with conversations, character memory and images, after 14 days. If you log in again during that time, the deletion is cancelled, which protects you from a decision made at a bad moment.

The settings also include login with a code sent by email. Once it is switched on, even if someone learns your password, they cannot get into your account without the code from your inbox. With conversations this personal, it is worth turning on.

Who can see a conversation: the honest answer

Many services skirt around this topic. We would rather say it plainly: conversations on CandysAI are not encrypted in a way that means nobody but you could ever read them. The service administrator can view conversations and character memory for safety, moderation and service quality. Every such opening of a conversation is recorded in a log: who looked, when, and whose conversation it was. Moderators see conversations only in connection with reports and safety alerts.

Why? Because a service built around conversations about feelings has to be able to respond when signs of a serious crisis appear in a chat, and it has to be able to check reports of abuse. The details, including how long data is kept, are set out in the CandysAI privacy policy. We write about the technical safeguards in more depth in is CandysAI safe, so we will not repeat it here.

The practical takeaway: treat a conversation with a character like a diary kept in the drawer of a trusted institution. Write freely about feelings, plans and doubts. Leave out anything that could harm you in the wrong hands.

Part three: habits outside the chat

7. Look after your phone and notifications

You can add CandysAI to your phone’s home screen and get notifications when a character messages you first. That is nice, but a message preview on the lock screen can be seen by anyone standing nearby. If you use a shared tablet, or your phone often sits on your desk at work, turn off content previews in your system settings or set quiet hours. Add basic hygiene on top: a screen lock, and logging out on other people’s computers.

8. Be wary of “friends” who ask for your details

This habit applies to the whole internet. A friendly conversation lowers your guard, which is exactly why scammers like to use it. If, in any app, someone or something you are chatting with asks for login details, a bank transfer, a photo of an ID document or “the code from the text message”, stop. A CandysAI character never needs this kind of data, so there is no reason it should ever receive it. We write about the dark side of digital intimacy and how some apps make money from data in the article when a friend sells your data.

A quick test before you hit send

If you do not want to remember eight points, one question before sending is enough: would this message be a problem if a stranger read it? Not whether you would feel a bit silly. Whether someone could use it against you.

• “I’m scared I won’t cope in my new job.” Personal, but safe. Go ahead.
• “I’ve got an appointment at the bank on 12 High Street, my customer number is…” The first half of the sentence is enough.
• “My brother Tom still hasn’t paid me back.” Fine, a first name and the situation are enough.
• “The safe code is 4471, but don’t tell anyone.” The character will not tell, but this is simply not the place for codes.

Summary

Privacy in conversations with AI does not require paranoia or writing in code. A few habits are enough: do not type passwords, numbers or addresses, protect other people’s data, look at the character’s memory now and then, know where the “Download your data” and “Delete account” buttons are, switch on the login code, and be aware of who can see a conversation and why. Then you can talk calmly about what really matters: feelings, plans and an ordinary day.