Is Google Gemini safe to use?

What Gemini collects

Google’s Gemini Apps Privacy Hub lists what you say and share: prompts, files, photos, videos, screens you ask about, imported chats from other assistants, and recordings and transcripts of Gemini Live. It also keeps what Gemini produces, your feedback, and the instructions you save in Gems or “Saved info.”

Gemini also collects information from your apps and devices: data from connected apps and other Google services you use with it, such as Search or YouTube history; device identifiers, browser and operating system; and, on phones, permissions such as call and message logs, contacts and screen content when you use those features. Location is always collected, from your IP address or the home and work addresses in your Google Account, and from your device’s precise location if you allow it.

Who can see your chats

Google says a subset of chats is read by human reviewers, including trained reviewers at outside service providers, to judge whether answers were poor or harmful and to suggest better ones. Chats are disconnected from your account before they go to reviewers. Google’s own advice is not to enter anything confidential that you would not want a reviewer to see.

Sharing outside Google follows its general privacy policy, which says Google shares personal information outside the company only with your consent, with administrators of a work or school account, with trusted businesses that process it on Google’s behalf, and for legal reasons. The Gemini hub adds that Google does not sell personal information. Connected apps keep their own copies under their own policies, and Google warns that it does not monitor or secure data sent to custom third-party connections.

How long it keeps your chats

With Keep Activity on, your chats are saved to Gemini Apps Activity and deleted automatically after 18 months. You can change that to 3 or 36 months, turn auto-delete off, or delete chats at any time.

Deletion has a gap: chats that reviewers have already seen, along with related data such as your language, device type and location, are not deleted when you delete your activity. They are kept for up to three years. Google also keeps some data, such as how often you use Gemini, until you delete your Google Account.

With Keep Activity off, or in a temporary chat, Google still keeps your chats with your account for 72 hours to respond, handle feedback and protect against abuse, and may still use human reviewers for safety.

When your chats train its models

While Keep Activity is on, Google uses your activity to develop and improve its services, including training generative AI models. Turning Keep Activity off stops future chats from being used to train them, unless you send feedback; feedback and the conversation behind it are reviewed and kept for up to three years. Temporary chats are not used for training.

Some processing sits outside these switches. Google says Gemini settings do not control its use of chats to create anonymized data for improving its services. Work and school accounts may be covered by different terms under Google Workspace.

Memory, personal context and ads

With Memory on, Gemini can reference your past chats to personalize answers, and Google says it may use sensitive information you shared to do so. Deleting a chat stops Gemini from using it for personalization, and a temporary chat keeps a conversation out of memory. Instructions you save stay until you delete them.

Google says Gemini chats are not used to show you ads, and that it will say so clearly if that changes. Turning off Gemini’s settings does not change other Google settings: Web & App Activity and Location History can keep saving data from your other Google services.

How to limit what Gemini keeps

Turn off Keep Activity in Gemini Apps Activity, or at least shorten auto-delete to 3 months. Use a temporary chat for anything sensitive. Turn Memory off or delete chats you do not want remembered. Disconnect apps Gemini does not need, especially third-party ones, and review Web & App Activity and Location History in your Google Account. Avoid the thumbs up and down buttons on sensitive chats, since feedback is reviewed and kept for up to three years.

Above all, leave out what the task does not need: account numbers, health details, passwords and other people’s private information. Once a reviewer has seen a chat, deleting it from your activity will not remove that copy.

How nokeep differs

nokeep needs no account, so there is nothing tied to your email, contacts or location history, and nothing to connect it to. Saved chats live in your browser and nokeep keeps no server copy of them; it does not train on your chats and runs no ads or advertising trackers. The tradeoff is that nothing syncs between devices, and clearing browser data erases your history.

Like Gemini, nokeep uses hosted models, so a prompt still has to be processed to be answered, under terms that the provider does not retain it afterwards. Free use covers 25 messages and 2 images a day, plus one short video clip while the daily free supply lasts.