Actually Works

Actually Works · Episode 62

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Delete a ChatGPT chat, and OpenAI can still keep it for up to 30 days.

OpenAI's help center says a deleted ChatGPT chat leaves your account right away but is only scheduled for permanent deletion from OpenAI's systems within 30 days — and can be kept longer for security or legal reasons. In 2025 a court also made OpenAI preserve chats that would otherwise have been deleted, in the New York Times lawsuit; press reports say that duty ended the same year.

The exact clicks

  1. Open chatgpt.com in a browser and sign in. (On the phone app, tap the menu icon, then your profile, then Settings, then Data controls.)
  2. Click your profile picture or name at the bottom left, then click Settings.
  3. Click Data controls.
  4. Click Delete all chats and confirm. Deleting cannot be undone, and OpenAI says it still takes up to 30 days to be erased from its systems.
  5. Optional: for a chat you do not want kept at all, start it as a Temporary Chat. OpenAI says Temporary Chats are also deleted from its systems within 30 days.
  6. Optional: deleting chats does not stop future chats from being used for training — that is a separate setting in the same Data controls area. Its exact name can differ by account.

What changes

  • Verified live (8.10.2026) against OpenAI's help center articles on deleting chats and on chat and file retention (help.openai.com): removed from your account immediately, permanently deleted from OpenAI systems within 30 days, unless de-identified or retained for security or legal reasons.
  • The court order: a May 2025 order in New York Times v. OpenAI required OpenAI to preserve output logs. Press reports (Engadget, 11 October 2025) say a 9 October 2025 order ended that duty going forward, from 26 September 2025, while logs already saved stay accessible and data on accounts the Times flagged is still kept.
  • Topic chosen because episode 61 promised it on air, and because the best recent episodes are all "something is already happening to your data".

What it will not do

  • This channel did not test this on a live account. OpenAI's own page about the lawsuit could not be opened (HTTP 403), so the court details come from press reports, not from OpenAI.
  • OpenAI does not say, in the pages read, whether Delete all chats also removes archived chats. Deleting a chat does not delete files saved to your Library.
  • Menu names are taken from OpenAI's help pages and public guides; your screen may differ slightly.