The 3-question data checklist — before you upload anything to an AI

Free · printable (Ctrl/Cmd+P) · no email required. From Where does your clients' data live when you use AI?

1 · Where is it processed? On your machine, on a server you control, or in a third party's cloud in another jurisdiction?
✓ I can name the country and the company that hold this data.
2 · Is it trained on? Free tiers of several popular assistants use your content to improve their models unless you opt out; business tiers exclude it by contract.
✓ I have read the data policy — or the contract excludes training explicitly.
3 · Can you truly delete it? If you don't know where the data lives, you can't guarantee its deletion — and that guarantee is your clients' right.
✓ I know the deletion path and could execute it if a client asked today.

The rule of thumb

Public things to the cloud; sensitive things at home. If any answer above is "I don't know", don't upload client data there yet — use a contract tier that excludes training, or local AI that keeps the data on your own machine.


25 United Capital applies this to itself first: a user's data lives on their machine and nowhere else. We build in public at 25united.com/en.