How to Protect Your Privacy From AI in 2026: A Real Guide
Data brokers, AI training, and the settings that actually limit your exposure as a solo operator
The Delivvo team· June 13, 2026 9 min read
You cannot fully erase yourself from AI in 2026. You can shrink how much of you feeds it. A few moves do most of the work. Remove your records from the biggest data brokers. Turn off the AI training toggles that platforms switch on by default. Stop letting client information scatter across a dozen inboxes and chat apps. None of this takes a lawyer. Most of it takes one focused afternoon.
This guide is for the person running a one-person business or a small studio. You are not a privacy researcher, and you do not have an IT department. You have client contracts, files, invoices, and a public profile you actually need people to find. So the goal here is not to vanish. It is to control the parts you can, and to stop handing away the parts you do not have to.
Why this matters more in 2026 than it did two years ago
The ground shifted. Two things happened at once. Companies started using your existing public data to train AI models, and they mostly did it by default, with an opt-out buried in settings rather than a clear question up front.
Look at how the big platforms moved. Meta resumed training its AI on public posts and comments from European users starting May 27, 2025, relying on what it calls "legitimate interest" rather than asking for opt-in consent (according to The Register). LinkedIn did something similar, expanding AI training on member profiles and posts to the UK, EU, EEA, Switzerland, Canada, and Hong Kong from November 3, 2025, and again the setting was enabled by default (according to TechRadar). The pattern is the same across the industry: your stuff gets used unless you go and say no.
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Most people never say no, partly because they feel the fight is already lost. Pew Research found that 73% of Americans feel they have little to no control over what companies do with their data (according to Pew Research Center). That resignation is the real problem. It is also why a few deliberate moves put you ahead of almost everyone.
Start with data brokers, because that is where you get the most back
Data brokers are companies that collect and sell information about you: your name, addresses, phone numbers, relatives, approximate income, and often your precise location history. You never signed up. They scraped public records, bought app data, and stitched a profile together. That profile then feeds people-search sites, marketing lists, and increasingly, AI training sets built from "publicly available" web data.
The harm is not theoretical. In 2024 the FTC banned several brokers, including X-Mode, Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel, and Mobilewalla, from selling location data that could track people's visits to sensitive places like reproductive health clinics and places of worship (according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation). Those were the ones that got caught. Plenty of brokers still operate, and your record sits in dozens of their databases right now.
Here is the practical sequence.
Remove yourself from the major people-search sites
Start with the names everyone uses to look you up: Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Intelius, Radaris, and MyLife. Each has an opt-out page. Search "[site name] opt out" and follow the form. You will usually paste in your listing URL, confirm an email, and wait a few days for removal. Budget an hour for the first pass. Keep a simple list of which sites you have hit, because they repopulate and you will want to recheck every few months.
Decide if a removal service is worth it
Services like DeleteMe, Optery, or Incogni do this continuously across hundreds of brokers for a yearly fee. For a solo operator whose name and home address feed into client trust, the time saved is usually worth the money. If your budget is tight, do the top ten brokers by hand and revisit quarterly. Either way, the goal is the same: thin out the public version of you that strangers and scrapers can buy.
File the opt-outs your state or region gives you
If you are in California, the CCPA gives you the right to tell businesses to delete and not sell your data. Other US states have added similar laws, and the GDPR covers Europe. Use them. A short "delete my personal data" email to a broker carries legal weight in many places, and brokers know it.
A quiet home office desk with a laptop, notebook, and coffee, set up for focused work
Turn off AI training where your accounts already let you
This is the highest-value ten minutes you will spend. Three toggles, three platforms.
ChatGPT and other assistants
If you use ChatGPT on a free or Plus personal account, your conversations are used to improve the models by default (according to Fello AI). Go to Settings, then Data Controls, then switch off "Improve the model for everyone." Do the same in Claude and Gemini, which both offer their own training toggles. One caveat worth knowing: turning it off stops future conversations from being used. It does not pull back anything already processed. So the habit matters more than the switch. Do not paste a client's contract, a private financial figure, or anyone's personal details into a consumer chatbot you would not want quoted back.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn keeps the most professional detail about you, which makes it the worst place to leave training on. Go to your profile picture, then Settings and Privacy, then Data Privacy, then "Data for Generative AI Improvement," and turn off "Use my data for training content creation AI models" (according to Tuta). It takes thirty seconds.
Meta, X, and the rest
On Facebook and Instagram, search the Help Center for "AI" and submit the objection form where your region offers one. On X, settings include a "Grok" data-sharing toggle worth turning off. None of these are perfect, and the legal fight over whether "opt out by default" is even allowed is ongoing. But every toggle you flip is a profile the next model does not get.
Harden the browser and accounts you use every day
Privacy leaks through a hundred small holes. You do not have to plug all of them. Plug the ones that leak the most.
Switch your default browser to one that blocks trackers out of the box, or add a content blocker to the one you have. Set your search engine to one that does not build an ad profile from your queries. Turn on "Do Not Track" and the global privacy control signal where your browser supports it, because a growing number of US state laws now require companies to honor that signal as a legal opt-out.
Clean up the permission sprawl. Open your Google and Apple account dashboards and review which third-party apps you connected years ago and never use. Revoke them. Each one is a standing door into your contacts, files, or calendar. Then check location permissions on your phone, because app-collected location is exactly what those banned brokers were buying.
If you have not done it yet, this is also the moment to get a password manager and turn on two-factor authentication everywhere that holds client or financial data. Privacy and security are not the same thing, but a breached account leaks more about you and your clients than any broker ever could.
The part most guides skip: your clients' data is your exposure too
Here is the trap for independents. You can lock down your own accounts and still bleed information through the way you run client work. Every time a contract, a payment detail, or a sensitive brief lives in your email, your texts, and three different chat apps, you have multiplied the number of places that data can leak, get scraped, or end up in a tool you never vetted.
Think about where a typical project actually sits. A proposal in your inbox. A signed contract as a PDF attachment. Files traded over a consumer messaging app that may well reserve the right to scan content. Bank details typed into a chat thread. That is not one location you control. It is six you do not.
The fix is boring and effective: consolidate. Put the proposal, the contract, the files, the approvals, and the invoice in one access-controlled place, and stop copying that data into channels that were never built to hold it. Fewer copies means fewer leaks. It also means that when a client asks you to delete their information, you can actually do it, because you know exactly where it lives. If you are still running everything through chat threads, this companion piece on why that breaks down is worth a read: stop running your freelance business on WhatsApp. And if you want the broader case for a single hub over scattered email, see client portal vs email for delivering work.
This is the part Delivvo is built for. Instead of a client's contract, files, and payment details scattering across your inbox and chat apps, they live in one branded portal with proper access controls, and payments run straight through your own gateway with Delivvo taking nothing. One place you control beats six you do not. See how it works
Questions solo operators actually ask
How do I stop AI from training on my data right now?
Do three things today. Turn off the training toggle in ChatGPT under Settings, then Data Controls, then "Improve the model for everyone." Turn off LinkedIn's "Data for Generative AI Improvement" under Settings and Privacy. Submit the AI objection form on Meta and X where your region offers one. Then change the habit: keep client contracts, personal details, and financial figures out of consumer chatbots entirely, since opting out only covers future data, not what was already used.
Should I pay for a data removal service?
If your real name and home address are tied to client trust, yes, a service like DeleteMe or Optery usually pays for itself in saved hours, because brokers repopulate and manual removal becomes a chore. If money is tight, do the ten biggest people-search sites by hand and recheck every quarter. The 80/20 rule applies: a handful of brokers feed most of the others.
What is the single highest-impact change?
Consolidating client data into one place you control. AI training toggles protect you. Data broker opt-outs protect you. But scattered client information is the leak you create yourself, every week, by habit. Fixing it shrinks your exposure and makes you look more professional at the same time.
Can I ever be fully private?
No, and chasing that will only burn you out. Public records exist, you need to be findable for work, and some data is already in models that cannot be untrained. Aim for "hard to profile and nothing sensitive exposed," not "invisible." That is achievable, and it is enough.
The short version
Privacy in 2026 is not a wall you build once. It is a set of small, repeatable moves. Pull your records from the big data brokers and recheck them every few months. Flip the AI training toggles your platforms quietly turned on. Tidy your browser and your app permissions. And stop scattering client data across channels you do not control, because that is the leak you can actually close. Do the afternoon of work, set a calendar reminder for the quarterly recheck, and you will be ahead of almost everyone, including the version of yourself that felt the whole thing was hopeless.
