(Web Desk) - Cyber-experts have warned against handing over information to chatbots, even if it seems harmless.
Chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT are designed to make your life easier.
They can answer complex questions and even perform tasks – in an eerily humanlike way.
So it may be tempting from time to time to reveal things about yourself, including your name, but you must avoid it at all costs.
"Don’t send any personal data to a chatbot," warned Kaspersky's Stan Kaminsky.
"No passwords, passport or bank card numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, names, or other personal data that belongs to you, your company, or your customers must end up in chats with an AI.
"You can replace these with asterisks or “REDACTED” in your request." That's because the information that you send to an artificial intelligence chatbot may not always stay private.
For a start, ChatGPT itself saves dialogues that can then be re-used to fix technical problems or prevent service violations.
And your conversations may even be reviewed by human moderators. Your chats may also be used to train new versions of GPT – or other alternatives – in the future.
There's a chance that a bug could cause your conversations to leak, or the chatbot could even inadvertently share your info with another user.
"Remember: anything you write to a chatbot can be used against you," Kaminsky said.
You should also avoid uploading documents to chatbots.
Plenty of chatbots allow you to do this – although some require add-ons.
And even though it might help you to get your work done, it's a very bad idea. "Don’t upload any documents. Numerous plug-ins and add-ons let you use chatbots for document processing," Kaminsky advised.
"There might be a strong temptation to upload a work document to, say, get an executive summary.
"However, by carelessly uploading of a multi-page document, you risk leaking confidential data, intellectual property, or a commercial secret such as the release date of a new product or the entire team’s payroll."
It's best to keep your conversations with chatbots as anonymous as possible.