In plain terms
The chatbot never knows you the way a bank does — which is exactly why it should never know your secrets at all.
Chatbots are wonderful translators of jargon and generous drafters of letters. They are also companies’ products, and what you type is the product’s raw material.
What actually gets stored
Most free chatbots keep your conversation history — that is how “threads” and “Ask about this later” work. Providers also log the query to train and evaluate the model, subject to their own policies, and they may share it with vendors and human reviewers when problems are reported. The delete button exists, but deletion is only as good as the policy behind it.
Why it matters
- Keeping history is a feature, not an accident — so is the claim of privacy when you are the raw material.
- A pasted PAN is not just a typo; it is a copy left in a vendor’s system forever.
- The advice stays the same across products: never paste what you would not put in a public post.
Key takeaways
- Conversation history is kept by design.
- Aadhaar, PAN, OTP, bank details: never pasted.
- Redact files before you let AI read them.
The red line for India
Anything with your Aadhaar number, PAN, bank account, UPI PIN, OTP or full ID photo is a piece of forensic treasure. Pasting it into a chat is a one-way door — you cannot un-see who trained on it.
What you should do
- Ask your questions without real identifiers — use “my PAN details” instead of the actual number.
- Clear conversations you are done with in the product’s settings.
- For documents, redact every ID number before uploading anything.