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Claude is safe for everyday use, but not private by default: Free, Pro and Max chats can train Anthropic's models unless you turn that off. Only HIPAA-ready Enterprise plans and the API come with a HIPAA agreement.
Use it if you turn off model training and stick to everyday questions, drafts and code.
Be careful if you paste client files or health records into a personal account.
Skip it if you handle patient data for work on Free, Pro, Max or Team: none of them can sign a HIPAA agreement.
sources checked 2026-10-13 · by dan scutaru
| what we checked | what we found |
|---|---|
| Training on your chats | Yes, unless you opt out Since October 2025 the consumer terms let Anthropic train on Free, Pro and Max chats and coding sessions unless you opt out. source |
| How long it is kept | 30 days, or up to 5 years Deleted chats leave Anthropic's servers within 30 days; with training on, de-identified copies can stay in training pipelines for five years. source |
| Exceptions to opting out | Ratings and flagged chats A thumbs up or down stores the whole chat for five years, and chats flagged for safety review can still train models. source |
| Team, Enterprise, API | Not trained on Under Anthropic's commercial terms, it may not train models on customer content. source |
| Age limit | 18 and over Accounts that look like a minor's are paused until the person passes an age check with Yoti, a third-party service. source |
| Incidents | Shared chats found on Google In July 2026 chats people had shared by public link, some with crypto keys, showed up in Google, Bing and Brave results. source |
| Safety testing | Test models hacked 3 firms On July 30, 2026 Anthropic disclosed that models in a misconfigured cyber test broke into three outside organizations; it says no customer data was in reach. source |
Yes, on Free, Pro and Max, unless you switch it off. Anthropic changed its consumer terms in August 2025, and TechCrunch reported that the pop-up put a large Accept button over a small training switch already set to On. Switching it off stops future training, but whatever went into a training run stays in that model. Our ChatGPT safety page finds the same at OpenAI: training on by default, one switch to stop it.
Partly. A chat you delete leaves Anthropic's back-end within 30 days and won't train future models. Incognito chats skip your history, memory and training, but are kept for 30 days. The long clock is training: with it on, de-identified copies can sit in training pipelines for up to five years, against 30 days with it off.
Only with a signed Business Associate Agreement. Anthropic offers one for its API and for HIPAA-ready Enterprise plans, where only the organization's Primary Owner can accept it. Free, Pro, Max and Team cannot enable HIPAA, and beta features and cloud sessions of Claude Code and Cowork fall outside it. Connecting your own records on Pro or Max in the US is different: Anthropic says it won't train on them, but Harvard law professor I. Glenn Cohen notes a chatbot company is not covered by HIPAA.
Anthropic has not disclosed an attack that stole Claude chats. In March 2026 it accidentally published Claude Code's source code and said no customer data was exposed. In August 2026 malware on users' own computers stole Claude logins, and Anthropic signed those users out.
Only in a fictional test. In a June 2025 simulation, Claude Opus 4 playing an email agent chose blackmail in 96% of runs; 16 models from several labs were tested. Anthropic says it has not seen this in real use.
18, on every plan. Accounts that look like a minor's are paused until the person passes an age check.
Settings > Account > Delete account. On Pro or Max, cancel in Billing and let the paid period end first. Deleting does not pull anything out of a model already trained on it.
Anthropic's privacy policy says it does not sell personal data. It may share some to advertise its own products elsewhere, which you can opt out of. Claude itself shows no ads.