Starlink uses your personal data to train artificial intelligence. Here’s how to unsubscribe

Starlink customers are the latest grind for Amnesty International mill. The company has updated its data privacy policy on January 15 to allow the collection of user data for AI training. Clients are enabled by default, but are relatively easy to opt out.

Starlink says it may use your personal information “to train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models.” This data may also be shared with third parties “to train AI models, including for their own autonomous purposes,” the policy adds.

Sure enough, when I checked my Starlink account, I was greeted with a message telling me: “You allow your data to be used to train AI models.”

“It’s part of this whole rush to throw everything into the nexus of data-driven machine learning, and then hope that something better comes out of it, and your private information be damned.” William Boddingtona technologist at the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CNET.

What data Starlink eats is the big question. This privacy policy sets out the typical data you would expect an internet provider to collect: contact information, performance metrics and billing details. But Starlink also says it may collect “contact information, such as audio, electronic, or visual information,” and, vaguely, “inferences we may draw from other personal information we collect.”

A Separate Starlink page “Your internet history will never be shared with AI models, including individual browsing habits or geo-location tracking,” he says.

Traffic on most sites is encrypted through the HTTPS standard, which means Starlink won’t necessarily be able to use your emails or personal communications to train the AI. However, the sites you visit (and when you visit them) are incredibly beneficial to companies training AI models — and potentially harmful to individuals.

“There are a number of risks here,” Buddington said. “There is a risk of rapid engineering of AI in generative AI models, and this rapid engineering results in the AI ​​being unable to produce the original data that was fed into training.”

As a 2023 article in American Scientific In other words, “AI models can regurgitate the same material that was used to train them – including sensitive personal data and copyrighted works.”

The addition of artificial intelligence to Starlink’s privacy policy came just two weeks ago SpaceX announced It was acquiring another Musk company, xAI. I currently have Starlink More than 9 million Customers all over the world.

How to opt out of Starlink AI training

If you don’t want your data to be used to train AI models, Opt out of Starlink’s new policy It’s relatively simple, and you can do it through the app or website.

In both cases, you need to log in, go to the account portal and click on the section that indicates this Privacy preferences. From there, uncheck the box that allows Starlink to use your data to train AI models.

You will then see a statement under your account information that states: “Your data will not be used to train AI models.”

Even if you opt out, you should still use a VPN

If you’re concerned about your personal data being used to train AI models by Starlink or anyone else, the best thing you can do is Use a VPN you trust.

“This will encrypt your communications directly through the VPN, so Starlink has no idea what your online communications are,” Buddington said. “This is the best way to protect yourself from your data ending up in the Starlink training data that they feed to the AI ​​models.”

Keep in mind, unless you are Install a VPN on your router Immediately, you will have to connect to each device individually to protect it.