OpenAI Adds Locked Chats with PIN Protection to ChatGPT

OpenAI has added a privacy feature called Locked Chats to ChatGPT. It lets people protect individual conversations with a special PIN code. These chats are hidden from the usual chat history and search results. This helps stop other people from seeing them by accident when someone shares their screen. The feature is being rolled out to Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts.

To lock a chat, click the three-dot menu next to the conversation title and choose Lock chat. The conversation will move to a separate section called Locked chats under Projects. You must enter your personal PIN to open a locked conversation. On mobile devices, you can use face or fingerprint recognition, such as Face ID or Touch ID, instead. The PIN is linked to your main account, not to a single workspace. This means you need to set up a PIN separately for each profile.

Locking a chat removes its messages and uploaded documents from search results across the app. However, this feature does not use end-to-end encryption, which is a way to protect messages so that only the people involved can read them. The usual rules for how long data is kept and whether it can be used to train AI models still depend on your account settings. There is also an important risk if you forget your PIN. Resetting a forgotten PIN permanently deletes all locked chats, the special memories stored in them, and their attached files. Customer support cannot recover this lost data.

The update is now being rolled out to the desktop apps for Windows and macOS, as well as the official mobile apps. People on every subscription plan, from free accounts to business teams, will get access as the release reaches accounts around the world.