Claude
What the default settings do
Anthropic changed its approach to consumer data in 2025. Previously, Claude’s Free, Pro, and Max plans did not train on conversations by default. As of late August 2025, new and existing consumer accounts are instead asked to make an active choice: a setting called “Help Improve Claude” that, when turned on, allows Anthropic to use your chats and coding sessions, in de-identified form, to train future models. Existing users were shown this choice directly in the app and given until early October 2025 to decide; if you never explicitly interacted with the prompt, it’s worth checking your current setting rather than assuming which way it landed.
The setting directly changes how long your data is kept. If you turn training on, Anthropic states it may retain your conversations in de-identified form for up to 5 years as part of its model training pipeline. If you leave it off, standard retention applies: conversations you delete are removed from your visible chat history immediately and purged from Anthropic’s backend systems within 30 days.
Feedback you give on responses, the thumbs up or thumbs down ratings, is treated the same way as the training setting itself: retained for up to 5 years, tied to the same policy rather than following a separate, shorter rule.
There’s a separate and longer retention path for anything flagged during Anthropic’s trust and safety review, such as content flagged for violating usage policies. Inputs and outputs connected to that kind of review can be kept for up to 2 years, and the safety classification scores themselves for up to 7 years, regardless of your training setting.
Business and institutional use is handled differently and isn’t affected by the consumer toggle at all. Claude for Work, Claude Enterprise, Claude for Education, Claude Gov, and API access through Anthropic’s developer console are excluded from the 2025 consumer policy change; these are governed by commercial terms that don’t train on your organization’s data by default, and API users can additionally request zero data retention arrangements. Anthropic has not published a data-handling rule specific to the Projects feature or MCP connectors in claude.ai that differs from the standard chat rules described here, so treat Projects and connector data as following the same training and retention settings as any other conversation, unless Anthropic documents otherwise in the future.
A reasonable privacy baseline
This setting is found at claude.ai/settings/data-privacy-controls, reachable from your profile name in the bottom corner, then Settings → Privacy.
Model training
Settings → Privacy → Help Improve Claude → Off
This is the core opt-out. With it off, your conversations follow the standard 30-day backend retention rather than the longer training-related window, and your chats are not used to train future models. You can change this setting at any time, and it applies going forward from when you change it.
Delete individual conversations you don't want retained → From your chat history
Deleting a specific conversation removes it from your visible history immediately and, per Anthropic's documentation, from backend storage within 30 days, separate from whatever your training setting is generally.
Feedback
Thumbs up / thumbs down on responses → Use deliberately, not reflexively
Feedback submissions are retained on the same up-to-5-year basis as training data. If you've turned off Help Improve Claude but still want the shortest practical retention, rating responses sparingly, or not at all, keeps you consistent with that choice.
Projects and connectors
Review what you upload into a Project or share with a connected tool → Apply the same judgment as any chat
Since there is no separately documented retention policy for Project files or MCP connector data, the most reasonable approach is to treat anything you put into a Project, or any access you grant a connector, with the same caution you'd apply to a regular conversation under your current training setting.
Work and API accounts
Confirm which type of account you're using → Especially if Claude is provided through your employer
Claude for Work, Enterprise, Education, and Gov accounts, along with API access, are not covered by the consumer training toggle and don't train on your data by default under their commercial terms. If you use Claude through work, there's typically no consumer-style setting to adjust, though confirming which account type you actually have is worth doing if you're unsure.
Trade-offs
- Turning off Help Improve Claude means your conversations don’t contribute to Anthropic’s model development, which is a trade-off if you’d otherwise want to support that.
- The 30-day standard retention for opted-out users is still not instantaneous deletion; if you need a specific conversation gone sooner, deleting it directly is more reliable than relying on the general retention window.
- Rating responses only occasionally, to limit feedback-related retention, means giving Anthropic less signal about what’s actually useful, which may reduce future improvements you’d benefit from.
- Content flagged during safety review is retained for up to 2 years for the content itself and up to 7 years for classification scores regardless of your other settings, so there’s no toggle that avoids this path if a conversation is flagged.
- Treating Project and connector data as cautiously as a regular chat may mean being more conservative than strictly necessary, since Anthropic hasn’t documented different, possibly more restrictive, handling for that data specifically.
Who should not change these settings
- If you’re comfortable with your conversations contributing to model improvement and want the potential benefit of better future versions of Claude, leaving Help Improve Claude on is a straightforward, informed choice, not an oversight.
- If you use Claude through a Work, Enterprise, Education, or Gov account, or through the API, there is generally nothing to change here specifically, since these account types already default to not training on your data under their own terms.
- If you rely on Claude’s feedback mechanism to shape how it responds to you and don’t mind the associated retention, rating responses normally is a reasonable trade for that responsiveness.
- If you use Projects heavily for ongoing work and find the lack of a distinct, more restrictive policy acceptable given Anthropic’s general retention rules, there’s no need to change your workflow around it.