{
  "id": 9746038,
  "title": "I tried Proton's AI Paper Trail tool — and I couldn't believe how much data chatbots know about me",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/25/i-tried-protons-ai-paper-trail-tool-and-i-couldnt-believe-how-much",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-25T09:59:43.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechRadar",
    "slug": "techradar",
    "url": "https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/i-tried-protons-ai-paper-trail-tool-and-i-couldnt-believe-how-much-data-chatbots-know-about-me"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Uploading your ChatGPT export to Proton AI Paper Trail revealed a startling amount of personal data that users unintentionally share with AI chatbots. The free tool, developed by privacy-focused engineers at Proton, analyzes the exported chat history and shows exactly how much of yourself you've inadvertently handed over. Unlike Big Tech giants, Proton's Lumo LLM deletes user data immediately without retaining any of it.\n\nThe AI Paper Trail report categorizes users into sections like Financial Background, Health Limitations, and Family. It can even make surprising connections, such as estimating age, income, education level, and political leanings based on patterns in user interactions with chatbots. The report can assign an ad value, indicating how much profit companies could potentially make from your data.\n\nThe data collected is far more detailed than what Google search history reveals, and it can even infer psychological states like stress levels and moments of vulnerability. The cost of this data is a specific and substantial price tag, with companies profiting from it through advertising, training, or sharing beyond the basic functioning of large language models (LLMs).\n\nWhile most LLMs are data treasure troves, some are more privacy-friendly than others. Incogni's 2026 data privacy ranking scored 13 AI platforms, with Meta AI, Gemini, and Copilot being the worst offenders. However, even platforms like ChatGPT, rated as the least privacy-invasive, still have their privacy risks, as humans reading user prompts to improve models pose concerns. Users are voluntarily sacrificing their privacy by using AI chatbots, assuming a level of safety and anonymity that these tools often do not offer.",
  "summary": "As chatbots gets increasingy engrained in our day-to-day lives, we are pushed to share our most personal data without even realising the risk. I took Proton's test to truly understand what's at stake.",
  "key_points": [
    "Proton's AI Paper Trail tool uncovers extensive personal data from ChatGPT exports.",
    "Tool categorizes data into sections like Financial Background, Health Limitations, and Family.",
    "AI Paper Trail assigns ad value, revealing potential profit from user data."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}