Tell HN: Your ChatGPT account can be deactivated at any moment, losing your data

7 points by try-working 19 days ago | 3 comments

So my ChatGPT account that I have had for about a year was just deactivated without any reason given.

With this, I not only lose access to the model, but to a year's worth of data that I had sorted into project folders, where I kept research, project plans, jobs I would apply to and researched and prepared for.

Everyone should be aware that if you use OpenAI (or Anthropic), they can shut off your access at any time and you will not be able to access your data.

You can't store __any__ data in your OpenAI account. You must copy paste everything and store it on your own system.

Yes, I have appealed and the only reason I can think of for deactivation is that I use a VPN but that is not against policy - but lets see how easy it is to explain that to customer service.

Below is the non-informational deactivation email for reference:

"Hello,

OpenAI's terms and policies restrict the use of our services in a number of areas. We have identified activity in ChatGPT that is not permitted under our policies.

We are deactivating your access to our services immediately for the account associated with the email abc (User ID: xyz).

If you have questions or think there has been an error, you can use the button below to initiate an appeal. Initiate appeal

Best, The OpenAI team"

Please give this an upvote to spread the message.

matof 16 days ago |

This is actually more common than most people think. Most AI services reserve the right to terminate user accounts with no explanation, but since it's burried in the ToS, it can come as a surprise... Did you export your data from ChatGPT before they closed it?

latexr 19 days ago |

> Everyone should be aware that if you use OpenAI (or Anthropic), they can shut off your access at any time and you will not be able to access your data.

It’s a bit surprising that that continues to be a surprise, but I’m glad more people are becoming aware of it. That is true of most corporations, doubly so those created under a system which values and protects “innovation” (as they call it) which essentially means “fuck users, fuck other people, fuck the environment, fuck the rest of the world, and fuck regulation, the only thing that matters is my own personal profit”.

No, you can’t trust OpenAI, or Anthropic, or Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, or, or, or to not deactivate your account and prevent your access to your data on a whim. They’ve all done it before (though some are worse than others) and they’ll all do it again until there are big enough consequences.

If you are in the EU or California or somewhere with data protection laws, maybe you can plead your case to at least get back your data.

try-working 19 days ago | |

This is the first time I've had an account closed (30+ years) so my feeling is that these AI firms are even less dependable than Google and Microsoft. Especially as we see them constantly changing around their T&C around their plans.

I think we need a to be aware that it's fine to buy tokens from them, but they are NOT a place to store data. Never ever trust these companies with any of your data. Not your code, not your research, not your writing. Nothing. Let them be a dumb pipe into your systems. They don't deserve better.