OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mac app was storing conversations in plain text
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mac app was storing conversations in plain text
Oops
“We’re committed to providing a helpful user experience while maintaining our high security standards as our technology evolves.”
Ah, the most high security there is, plain text files.
Sadly, looks like they also didn’t store the files in an area accessible only to the user that created them. That seems like the most logical protection… I’m less worried about encryption if only my user id can access the files…
According to the post linked in the article, it's under
~/Library/Application Support.The good news is that
~/Libraryisn't world-readable by default. The bad news is that it's still very easily readable by any process running under the user and by any other user with admin privileges or access tosudo.
What kind of bullshit are people doing with GPT that this is even a concern?
Well, so does Ollama, but it is on your PC.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Until Friday, OpenAI’s recently launched ChatGPT macOS app had a potentially worrying security issue: it wasn’t hard to find your chats stored on your computer and read them in plain text.
That meant that if a bad actor or malicious app had access to your machine, they could easily read your conversations with ChatGPT and the data contained within them.
After The Verge contacted OpenAI about the issue, the company released an update that it says encrypts the chats.
“We are aware of this issue and have shipped a new version of the application which encrypts these conversations,” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says in a statement to The Verge.
“We’re committed to providing a helpful user experience while maintaining our high security standards as our technology evolves.”
After downloading the update, Pereira Vieito’s app no longer works for me, and I can’t see my conversations in plain text.
The original article contains 364 words, the summary contains 148 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!