ChatGPT for Mac was saving your conversations in plain text, but its all good now

The recently launched ChatGPT app for macOS had a security exploit that allowed everyone to read your conversations with the AI powered chatbot.

The outage took place around 9:14 am when thousands of users reported issues with the chatbot.

Last month, OpenAI launched a new ChatGPT app for Mac. Previously limited to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, the new app is compatible with Macs powered by Apple silicon and running on macOS 14 or newer.

While many flocked to ChatGPT for Mac, it was recently found out that the app had a huge security exploit that could allow threat actors to read every conversation you had with the AI-powered chatbot.

According to Swift developer Pereira Vieito, who goes by the name ‘pvieito’ on Threads, the ChatGPT app on macOS is “not sandboxed and stores all your conversations in plain text in a non-protected location.” This meant that any app, malware or user could read all your ChatGPT conversations whenever they wanted to.

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ChatGPT for Mac was storing all your conversations in plain text. (Image Source: Pereira Vieito/Threads)

A report in The Verge suggested that the developer shared an app with them that could read their ChatGPT conversations with a single click. When asked about how he managed to discover the exploit, the developer said he was checking where ChatGPT stores its data and found that OpenAI did not adhere to the app sandbox protections used by the majority of apps on macOS.

Since the ChatGPT for macOS app is not available on the Mac App Store and is offered by OpenAI on its website, it does not have to follow the stringent requirements that apply to apps distributed via the official channel.

Following this, the publication alerted OpenAI about the issue which then promptly released an update that automatically encrypts all your chats. Vieito also confirmed that his application stopped working after the update and that he could no longer see the conversations in plain text.