New Guide

AI Assistants

AI tools are extraordinarily useful — but most of them store everything you type. Here’s how to use them wisely.

My recommendation

Two tools for two purposes

Duck.ai for anything private or sensitive. Perplexity for research — but never enter personal information into Perplexity.

Try Duck.ai Try Perplexity AI

The golden rule of AI assistants

Treat everything you type into an AI as potentially public. Never enter your full name, address, Social Security number, financial details, medical information, or anything you wouldn’t want a stranger to read.

For private or sensitive questions: Duck.ai

Duck.ai routes your queries anonymously to powerful AI models (including GPT-4o and Claude) without revealing your identity to the underlying AI provider. DuckDuckGo strips identifying information from your request before forwarding it, and does not store your conversations.

  1. 1

    Go to duck.ai

    Visit duck.ai or open the DuckDuckGo Browser and tap the Duck.ai icon. No account required.

  2. 2

    Choose your model

    You can select from several AI models including GPT-4o mini, Claude, and Llama. They all work well for general questions.

  3. 3

    Ask your question

    Type your question naturally. Duck.ai is good for: health questions, legal questions, financial questions, personal advice, and anything you want to keep private.

For research and general questions: Perplexity

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Perplexity is powerful — but it is NOT private

I recommend Perplexity because it is the best AI research tool available. It searches the web in real time and cites its sources, making it far more accurate than most AI tools for current events, fact-checking, and research. But you must understand what you are trading for that capability.

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in March 2026 (Doe v. Perplexity AI Inc., N.D. California) alleges that Perplexity embedded Facebook’s Meta Pixel, Google Ads, Google DoubleClick, and Meta’s Conversions API — and that full conversation text was transmitted to Meta and Google. The lawsuit specifically alleges this occurred even in Incognito Mode, calling that feature “a sham.” These allegations have not been proven in court.

Treat Perplexity like a public search engine. Never enter anything you would not want Meta or Google to read.

With those caveats clearly stated: Perplexity is genuinely the superior tool for research tasks. Use it for general knowledge, current events, product research, and fact-checking — but keep it impersonal.

  1. 1

    Go to Perplexity.ai

    Visit perplexity.ai. You can use it without an account for basic queries.

  2. 2

    Use it only for non-personal research

    Perplexity is excellent for: current events, product research, travel planning, general knowledge, and fact-checking. Never enter personal information.

  3. 3

    Check the sources

    Perplexity cites its sources below each answer. Always click through to verify important information — AI tools can still make mistakes.

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Never enter these into any AI tool

Your full name + address, Social Security number, bank account or credit card numbers, medical diagnoses or prescription details, passwords or security questions, or information about other people without their consent.

What happens to what you type into AI tools

When you type a question into ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or most other AI assistants, that conversation is stored on the company’s servers. In many cases it is used to train future versions of the AI model. Your conversations may be reviewed by human employees for quality and safety purposes, and are subject to the company’s data retention policies — which can mean storage for months or years.

Most AI companies are based in the United States and are subject to US law enforcement requests. Some, like OpenAI, have faced criticism for their data practices and have had security incidents. The rule of thumb: assume everything you type into any cloud AI is potentially readable by the company, its employees, its advertisers, and law enforcement.

Why Duck.ai is different

Duck.ai acts as a privacy-preserving intermediary. When you use it, DuckDuckGo strips your IP address and other identifying information from the request before forwarding it to the underlying AI model (GPT-4o mini, Claude, Llama, or Mixtral). The AI provider never knows who asked the question. DuckDuckGo itself does not store your conversations after the session ends.

This is a meaningful privacy improvement over using ChatGPT or Claude directly. It is not perfect anonymity — DuckDuckGo can still see your queries during the session — but it removes your identity from the equation at the AI model level.

Perplexity: the best research tool, with serious privacy caveats

Perplexity is genuinely the most capable AI research tool I have used. It searches the web in real time, cites its sources, and produces answers that are far more accurate for current events and fact-checking than tools that rely on static training data. For those reasons, I recommend it — but with clear eyes about what it costs you in privacy.

What Perplexity collects

  • Device data and interaction data from all users, including those without accounts
  • Your IP address and device fingerprint
  • Search queries, which are used for AI training by default (you can opt out in Settings)
  • Personal information if you create an account

The March 2026 lawsuit

In March 2026, a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California (Doe v. Perplexity AI Inc., 3:26-cv-02803) alleging that Perplexity had embedded Facebook’s Meta Pixel, Google Ads, Google DoubleClick, and Meta’s Conversions API into its platform — and that full conversation text was being transmitted to Meta and Google as a result. The lawsuit specifically alleges this occurred even in Perplexity’s “Incognito Mode,” calling that feature “a sham” because the same trackers allegedly fired regardless of the setting. These allegations have not been proven in court; Perplexity’s only public response at the time of writing was that it had not yet been served the complaint.

This is consistent with a pattern of behavior: Perplexity was caught violating robots.txt crawling rules in 2024 and deploying stealth web crawlers in 2025. The company has repeatedly prioritised capability and growth over ethical constraints.

How to reduce your exposure if you use Perplexity

  1. Go to Profile → Settings → AI Data Usage and turn it OFF to stop your queries being used for AI training.
  2. Use it without creating an account where possible — this limits how much personal data is tied to a profile.
  3. Do not rely on Incognito Mode for privacy protection — based on the lawsuit allegations, it may not protect you from third-party tracking.
  4. Treat every query as if Meta and Google will read it. If that makes you uncomfortable, use Duck.ai instead.

The right mental model for AI tools

Think of AI assistants the way you’d think of asking a question in a crowded public space. You might ask a stranger for directions, or ask a librarian to help you find a book on a general topic. But you wouldn’t announce your Social Security number, describe your medical history, or share your financial details in that setting.

AI tools are extraordinarily useful for general knowledge, writing assistance, research, and creative tasks. Use them freely for those purposes. Just be thoughtful about what personal information you include in your queries.

Further Reading