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AI Privacy Tips

Keep your details private
when you use AI.

Simple ways to share less with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. None of this is required to use the budget check, so pick whatever matters to you.

The simple version

Use CSV, not PDF

A CSV is just dates, descriptions and amounts, so there's very little private detail in it. The main one is your account number, and that's one column to delete in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. Some banks also put part of your card number in each description, which Find and Replace will clear (search for "Card").

PDF statements carry your name, address and account or card numbers, and there's no easy way to take them out. If you'd rather keep those private, don't upload PDFs.

Good habits

A few things worth doing

  • Turn off model training. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all let you stop your chats being used to improve their models. The guides below show where.
  • Use a temporary chat if the tool offers one, so the conversation isn't kept in your history.
  • Use your personal account, not one through work.
  • Leave ID out. The tool doesn't need your licence, passport or tax file number.
  • Delete the chat and your files when you're done.
Further reading

AI privacy guides from the source

OpenAI Data controls in ChatGPT How to stop your chats being used to train ChatGPT, and how Temporary Chat works. Anthropic Changing your model improvement settings in Claude How to stop your chats being used to improve Claude, on desktop and mobile. Google Gemini Apps Privacy Hub What Gemini keeps, and how the Keep Activity setting controls whether your chats are saved and used. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner Privacy and commercially available AI products Australia's privacy regulator on the risks of putting personal information into AI tools. Written for businesses, but a useful read.

These are external sites. Menus and setting names change, so each provider's own guide is the most up to date.

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