What ChatGPT's locked chats protect, and what they don't

Locked Chats is the privacy feature OpenAI shipped for ChatGPT on October 20: a way to hide a single conversation behind a PIN or Face ID instead of leaving it sitting in your regular history.

Most small business owners already run sensitive material through ChatGPT: a draft termination letter, pricing notes for a bid, a client's financial details pasted in for a quick summary. Until now, all of that sat in plain view in your chat history, visible to anyone who picked up your laptop or phone to show a photo or check email. Locked Chats is OpenAI's answer, rolling out across Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans.

What locked chats actually do

• You lock a conversation from its options menu, then protect it with a four-digit PIN or your device's Face ID or Touch ID.
• Locked chats move into their own section, separate from your regular sidebar, history, pinned chats, and search results.
• If you have Memory turned on, locked chats get a separate memory space. Anything new you tell ChatGPT in a locked chat personalizes future locked chats, not your regular ones.
• Unlike Temporary Chat, a locked conversation stays saved. You can come back to it anytime once you unlock it.

What locked chats don't protect against

• No encryption. OpenAI is explicit that this is not end to end encryption or a separate encrypted vault, just a visibility control on the sidebar and search.
• Nothing already memorized gets removed. If ChatGPT learned something about a client or your finances before you locked the chat, that information stays in your account.
• Resetting your PIN deletes every locked chat for good. There is no recovery path, so a forgotten PIN is a real cost, not an inconvenience.
• It doesn't cover everything. Temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, shared links, scheduled tasks, and meeting recordings can't be locked at all.

Where this earns its place in a service business

1. 1

   Lock the chat

   Open the conversation, tap its options menu, and choose Lock chat. Set a four-digit PIN or confirm with Face ID or Touch ID.

2. 2

   Decide what qualifies

   Pick a simple rule: anything you wouldn't want a client, employee, or your own kid reading over your shoulder gets locked. Everything else stays in regular history.

3. 3

   Keep the PIN recoverable

   Write the PIN down somewhere outside ChatGPT. Resetting it wipes every locked chat with no way back.

Locked chats is a small, useful control for a specific problem: the device other people can pick up. If you're running client conversations, HR notes, or financial drafts through ChatGPT every day, it's worth walking through where that data actually lives, what's shared on which device, and whether a locked chat or a different workflow altogether is the right fix. Happy to look at yours.