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Is it safe to paste your code into an AI chatbot?
Usually fine. Sometimes genuinely risky. The difference isn't the code itself, it's what's hiding inside it and what the tool on the other end does with what you send.
What actually happens when you paste code
It depends entirely on the tool, and most people never check. Three things matter: whether the provider trains future models on what you send, how long they retain it, and whether a human could ever end up reading it (support tickets, abuse review, etc). Every major AI product has a policy on this, usually in a settings page you've never opened. Read it once for whatever tool you use daily, it takes two minutes and it's the whole ballgame.
The real risk usually isn't the code, it's what's next to it
- Hardcoded secrets. API keys, database passwords, and tokens pasted along with a stack trace, because they were sitting right there in the config file you copied.
- Proprietary or NDA'd code. Employer or client code you're not actually allowed to share outside your org, regardless of how the AI tool handles it.
- Internal infrastructure details. Internal hostnames, IP ranges, or architecture notes in comments that reveal more about your systems than the bug itself needs.
- Customer data in test fixtures. Real user records copy-pasted into a "here's my test data" prompt because it was faster than writing fake data.
Before you paste, do this
- Search the snippet for anything that looks like a key, token, password, or connection string before you hit send, not after.
- Replace real values with obvious placeholders (
YOUR_API_KEY) rather than trusting yourself to remember to redact later. - Check whether your employer has an actual policy on this. Plenty do, and "I didn't know" doesn't help once code is out.
- If a tool can't tell you plainly whether it trains on your conversations, that's your answer. Assume yes.
How Sevoria handles this
Sevoria runs on its own local model, not a third-party API, and nothing about your conversations is used to train anything. That's not a settings toggle you have to find, it's how the thing is built. It doesn't make careless pasting of real secrets a good idea (still redact your keys, that's just good hygiene anywhere), but it does mean the code you paste to debug isn't quietly becoming someone else's training data.
Code privacy FAQ
Is it different for personal projects vs. work code?
The privacy mechanics are the same either way. What changes is the consequence: leaking your own side project is your call, leaking employer code can be a real problem regardless of how careful the AI tool is.
Are local AI models actually safer for this?
Generally yes, since there's no third party receiving your code at all, but "local" isn't automatically synonymous with "private," check what the specific tool actually does before assuming.
What if I already pasted a real secret by accident?
Rotate it immediately, treat it as compromised the moment it left your machine, regardless of which AI tool received it or what their policy says.
Try Sevoria for code More on privacy
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