For Opt Out October EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense team put together instructions for how to opt out of a lot of AI training.
Links below go to the instructions on the company/product site. We guide simplify it below the list.
Become an EFF member for less than the cost of DeleteMe :)
Chatbots
Social networks
Browsers
Phones
Other software
AI chatbots collect loads of data about how you use them, and much of that gets used for training to “improve models,” which can also sometimes mean some sort of human review step. Thankfully, most chatbots allow you to turn this off if you don’t want the content of your chats being used for purposes beyond the chat itself.
Because these directions tend to change often, and sometimes are completely different depending on which platform you’re on, we’ve collected the links to each specific tool’s documentation:
Disabling AI training on social networks gets tricky. After all, public posts on a variety of social networks were a huge part of the training data sets with LLMs, and the fact they’re public means they can and should be easy to scrape. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have any sort of control.
In most cases, including sites like Instagram and Facebook, your best option is to set your account type to private (this also helps prevent outside companies from easily scraping your posts too). But other social networks do offer some level of control.
Find more information here.
Find more information here.
Find more information here.
Find more information here.
AI has been integrated into many browsers in numerous ways. While it’s becoming increasingly difficult to turn these features off in some browsers, you do have a modicum of control (and if that’s not enough for you, consider switching browsers entirely). Here’s what you can do:
Phones are getting more and more AI features that depend on collecting your personal data, and it’s increasingly difficult to disable them. But it’s still possible, as long as you’re willing to live with some compromises.
There are a wide variety of Android phones out there and several different manufacturers that implement their own AI features, so you might need to dig around to find specific directions for your device. But if you have a Google Pixel or other phone that supports Gemini, here’s what you can do:
Google seems to keep adding more AI stuff in every update and it’s hard to keep up. For some more guidance, check out these guides.
With the release of iOS 27, removing AI from an iPhone (or iPad) has gotten more complex than it was previously, but it’s still doable. We detail this process more in-depth here, but here’s the short version, which requires that you roll back to a previous version of Siri and then implement some other changes:
Find more information here.
We’ve already covered Android, Chrome, and Google Search, but let’s dig through some of the company’s other tools.
Gmail packs all its AI features into one single settings toggle, and disabling it will turn off a whole slew of features you may have been using for years, like “smart compose,” automatic filters, and even spellcheck. Still, if you want to disable it, you can do so:
Find more information here.
The same goes for Google Workspace. You can disable Google Gemini features in Workspace, but be prepared to lose out on some features, like showing events from Gmail in the calendar automatically and personalized search results in Workspace. You can get to this setting from a few different places, but we’ll show directions from Google Drive.
Find more information here.
Of course, there’s an endless amount of software out there with AI stuff in it, like Zoom, Adobe Acrobat, and Notion, so there might be something you use everyday that’s not included here. Take a few minutes to dive deep into those settings to see if you can find ways to disable AI training or features, and be sure to share what you learn with others.
Maybe you don’t dislike AI so much as you hate the idea of all the major tech companies getting your data. Local models that you can control might be a good solution for your needs. With open weight models, you can run models similar to the big public ones entirely on your desktop or laptop, though the results may be slower and less sophisticated than what you get from models running on someone else’s server.
Running a local model typically involves choosing a local inference engine. Some examples include KoboldCpp, LM Studio, Ollama, or Llamafile. In addition you will have to choose an open weight model that can fit in your computer’s memory. These sorts of tools allow you to run models on your own computer, where you can then use it however you see fit, like for speech to text, grammar checking, or whatever else you dream up.
Other local options include purpose-built software that runs locally, but doesn’t require you to find and choose a model yourself. Examples of this sort of AI tool include the transcription tool OATS or the chat and image tool Off Grid AI Desktop.
Did you take a few steps to opt out of AI training? Here’s a special merit badge you can only get if you succeeded in opting out. Share it on social media! Tell your friends what you’ve accomplished and help them opt out too!
r/privacy • u/IKIR115 • Jul 08 '26
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https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1ulob97/weekly_recap_july_2_2026/
r/privacy • u/rcmaehl • 5h ago
Discord: How to we stop people from constantly making dis.cool clones?
Intern: Why don't we make discord messages google searchable
Discord: Fantastic!
r/privacy • u/SaveDnet-FRed0 • 10h ago
r/privacy • u/AsterPrivacy • 13h ago
r/privacy • u/RoscoeSF • 8h ago
I assume it’s a no, but I just saw a video about camera glasses. I did not realize they were getting so widespread and I don’t like the idea of someone recording me without my consent. Is there something I can wear, that if someone tries to record me, the camera will scan it and the recording will be damaged?
r/privacy • u/polymute • 23h ago
r/privacy • u/Spacious_made_3498 • 8m ago
I’m unable to read AP news site. A banner appears and tells me to either remove my ad blockers or donate to their site to support journalism. The banner says it’s not a paywall but you either have to give them money or trade your privacy. I wish I could share my screenshot. are other sites actively blocking you with these “privacy walls”? The banner is run by a company called Admiral, if anyone’s curious.
r/privacy • u/Lowkeykreepy • 17h ago
Last weekend I got curious how Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party) keeps everyone's video in sync. So I unpacked the extension (version 5.8.6) and read through it, including the scripts for all 44 sites it supports.
The sync part is simple. The rest is what got me:
- **Your whole Netflix history, every 14 days.** On any Netflix page it pulls the full viewing activity of every profile on the account, plus the list of devices signed in to it (device names and when they last watched). It uploads all of it to Teleparty's server, tagged with your Teleparty ID and email.
This happens whether or not you're in a party, and I found no consent prompt for it.
- **What you watch outside a party.** On supported sites it logs the title, video ID and page URL of what you're watching, party or not.
- **Your chat.** The full text of every chat message goes to their analytics server. Their privacy policy says they "currently do not store your messages or chat history".
- **A hidden site list.** It ships about 190 website names as MD5 hashes so you can't read them. I cracked 66: streaming sites plus IMDb, Letterboxd, TikTok, Rotten Tomatoes, JustWatch, Trakt and others. It injects a script into those too.
The privacy policy talks about anonymous usage statistics and never mentions watch history. To be fair, the account and history scraping is Netflix only; I found none on the other sites.
For a tool whose job is pressing play at the same time, that's a lot of watching you.
So I spent the weekend building my own, and it's now in the Chrome Web Store: **OpenParty**. Not posting the details here since it is against the rules but if you want, lmk and i can share it with you
r/privacy • u/SunflowerGlaive • 1d ago
r/privacy • u/EriksonThorsen • 17h ago
Getting rid of privacy trade-offs is challenging sometimes. Moving to open-source, zero-knowledge tools, and decentralized alternatives usually means dealing with rougher edges like less polished UI, smaller dev teams, fewer features, and slower sync speeds.
Out of curiosity, what are the swaps or alternatives you've tried to make, but eventually gave up on and reverted back, or decided the friction wasn't worth it?
I'll start. For me, there are two major ones:
Calendar apps: I tried hard to make Proton Calendar or Tuta work for my schedule. But because of limitations around syncing, like lacking full, seamless CalDAV support for external apps to centralize multiple calendars, I hit a wall. Trying to embed them into local calendar aggregators often meant they were read-only, so I couldn't edit or add events on the fly. The friction just broke my workflow.
Contact apps: I couldn't successfully integrate an alternative private contact manager into my routine. After testing a few options, the friction with everyday sharing, device sync, and cross-platform use was way too high. In the end, I compromised by stripping down my contact list to the absolute bare minimum, but I still rely on my device's default local and cloud contact app to keep things functional.
What about you? Which privacy tools or swaps proved to be a bridge too far for your daily routine?
r/privacy • u/Malor777 • 1d ago
r/privacy • u/Malor777 • 1d ago
r/privacy • u/Shrekprivacy • 1d ago
I've been planning on watching the Blade movie by renting it on YouTube but in order to pay for it, I have to verify my age. I can't use my debit card to verify my age and I don't have a credit card, I am unsure if it's worth showing Google my provisional licence or my selfie for age estimation.
With all that said, should I just give in and show YouTube my ID or face or find somewhere else to watch the Blade movies like Prime?
r/privacy • u/Adam-Perez8971 • 1d ago
Critics, civil liberties advocates, and post-colonial scholars have drawn parallels between modern surveillance technologies—such as mandatory digital ID systems and age-verification mandates—and historical systems of oppression like slavery, colonialism, and racial segregation.
While modern digital technologies are typically framed by governments as tools for security, efficiency, or child safety, critics argue they replicate the underlying structural harms of past regimes. The primary similarities lie in population control, freedom of movement restrictions, social stratification, and the exploitation of bodily data.
Here is how these concepts intersect across key themes:
Historical systems heavily relied on documentation to restrict and monitor the movement of subjugated populations.
• Pass Laws & Slave Passes: Under transatlantic slavery and apartheid-era racial segregation (such as the Pass Laws in South Africa), Black individuals were required to carry physical passes to travel, work, or exist in certain zones.
• Digital Bordering: Mandatory digital IDs and age-verification systems create "digital checkpoints." Just as historical passes dictated who could enter physical spaces, digital tracking determines who can access the public square of the internet, financial services, or essential utilities.
• Continuous Tracking: Under slavery and colonialism, surveillance was constant to prevent rebellion or escape. Digital IDs allow state and corporate entities to continuously log geolocation, browsing habits, and biometric data, effectively creating a permanent digital panopticon.
Colonialism and segregation enforced strict hierarchies that determined a person's legal, social, and economic worth based on categorization.
• Creating a Two-Tiered Society: Segregation laws (like Jim Crow in the United States) legally separated society into privileged and disenfranchised classes. Digital IDs risk creating a "digital caste system" where those who lack access to technology, lose their credentials, or are flagged by algorithmic errors are locked out of basic societal participation.
• Technological Exclusion: Historically, marginalized groups were denied documentation or legal status to strip them of rights. Today, mandatory digital verification disproportionately locks out the unbanked, refugees, indigenous populations, and rural communities who lack the required hardware, connectivity, or state-issued documentation.
Both colonialism and slavery treated the human body as data to be cataloged, owned, and exploited.
• Biometric Cataloging: Colonial administrators frequently used early biometric techniques—such as fingerprinting in colonial India under British rule—to control and identify native populations deemed untrustworthy.
• Extraction of Bodily Data: Slavery relied on the physical branding and strict inventorying of human bodies. Modern age-verification often utilizes facial analysis technology or biometric scanning, converting an individual's unique biological traits into data commodities that are processed, stored, and controlled by private corporations or the state.
Colonial expansion and racial segregation were frequently justified by dominant powers using paternalistic language, claiming oppression was for the "protection" or "improvement" of the subjugated group.
• The Rhetoric of Protection: Colonial powers used the narrative of the "White Man's Burden" or "civilizing missions" to justify stripping indigenous peoples of their autonomy.
• The "Think of the Children" Justification: Modern digital ID and age-verification mandates are heavily pushed under the guise of protecting minors or vulnerable groups from online harm. Critics argue this paternalistic framing is used to manufacture consent for invasive surveillance systems that strip the entire population of their digital autonomy and privacy rights.
r/privacy • u/polymute • 2d ago
r/privacy • u/doctormane • 1d ago
Just found out that WhatsApp is using AI to summarize private DMs, and it feels like a massive privacy breach.
How safe is this really? I’ve been searching everywhere for a way to turn it off, but it looks like there’s no option to opt out. Anyone else concerned about this?
What about other messaging services that are now including their own un-opt-outable AI features.
r/privacy • u/hippynox • 1d ago
Selling old Mac and need to ease data .Is using Apple method truly safe or is the another recommend method? Are there any new cases of data retrieval you have seen?
r/privacy • u/TopNotchRocks • 2d ago
r/privacy • u/NomadJago • 1d ago
Are my encrypted zip files safe, secure from being read by anybody (governments, employees of Mega) on Mega's cloud storage?
I hear different opinions on Mega for cloud storage and I have been using Mega for years. Allegedly e3ee zero knowledge, yet Mega is in New Zealand which founded and is part of the five eyes. I do not store anything illegal on Mega, but I do store my password encrypted (complex very strong password) zip files (two such files) that contain info on my accounts and their passwords). I don't share any links to my Mega files and I do not import any links shared with me.
r/privacy • u/Mynamesratboi02 • 11h ago
We all hate age verification because of the privacy nightmare that it is, but I'd like to point out another major issue with it: it's ageist. Ageism means discriminating a group of people because of their age, in this case, kids. It can also be the other way around, with children hating old people because they're "preachy" or "annoying".
Supporters of online age checks will say that they aren't ageist because they're the same as showing your ID to buy alcohol or tobacco. It's not the same. Alcohol and tobacco are scientifically proven to be much more harmful to kids than they are to fully developed adults. Using the Internet isn't inherently harmful and can even be beneficial.
Also, showing your ID to a bartender doesn't store a photocopy of it in some random, easy-to-breach Palantir database, so there's that.
Another reason why online age verification is ageist is because it can even affect adults for simply "not looking their age".
For instance, if I, God forbid, had to do a face scan, I would most certainly not pass despite being a grown-ass man. So I would have to further dox myself by giving my ID to Israel, just to use a service I'm already within my legal right to use. Just because I LOOK young.
Finally, age verification is ageist because it restricts children's access to material that ISN'T inappropriate. For example, information about biology, the LGBT community, politics and other controversial but not dangerous subjects.
It also restrains their free speech by hurling them into age-specific chats or outright banning them. Children have the right to free speech just like everyone else.
r/privacy • u/wizard-of-loneliness • 1d ago
Hello, I am looking for a doorbell camera, ideally one in an ecosystem of other security cameras, that allows local storage and is end-to-end encrypted. I currently have Blink cameras with local storage, but the video files on the thumb drive are not encrypted and there is no option to encrypt them or to auto-wipe the drive after X amount of time.
I understand that Blink is owned by Amazon and this is not the ideal setup; I have seen comments here saying that even the locally stored files pass through Amazon servers but I'm not sure if that's true or not. I want something where having physical access to the storage drive doesn't automatically grant access to the videos on it because they would require a key to decrypt, and I would like to automatically wipe the drive every 24 hours or so.
I do not want to pay a subscription fee to use my own hardware. Blink was very reasonably priced, but that's probably because Amazon takes a loss in exchange for trying to harvest your data/collect subscription fees.
I've seen people recommend Ubiquiti but their doorbell cam is close to $300 which is a bit out of my price range right now. Not sure if they have all the features I'm looking for because I balked at the price tag.
Does anything like what I'm looking for exist? It feels like a simple ask but maybe I'm the crazy one.
r/privacy • u/_maverick98 • 1d ago
Is there a request you can make for them to delete all the data they have on you , related to your chats? Or will they just say "ok" then dissapear the chats from your account and they keep them in some server forever
r/privacy • u/Mynamesratboi02 • 2d ago
I made a post on a romanian sub about how draconian the EU's KIDS Act is, why people shouldn't support it and how to fight back by signing the Stop Killing The Internet initiative, and got flamed. They called me a russian bot, propagandist and a couple other names xD. I didn't expect much but dayum.
