Heads-up for speedsters: Don't lose your chat history!

ChatGPT Bugs
1

I discovered a bug, nasty one where you can lose chat history.

:warning:Don’t try this with an important conversation!

Here is how you might be able to repro it:

  1. Open a new chat on your desktop browser
  2. Chatter a bit back and forth
  3. Grab your phone
  4. Open the same chat and read it
  5. Close the app
  6. Go back to your laptop/desktop and chatter more
  7. Grab your phone and chatter again

If you’ve been too fast, the chat on your phone didn’t refresh, and you lost your entire history from the desktop. The result might be that your phone history overrides the one on your desktop. :skull:

For ref, these are my testing devices and setup:

  • AMD Laptop PC (Win 11 Pro / 23H2)

    • Firefox 131.0 (uBlock Origin 1.60.0; I don't care about cookies 3.5.0)

  • iPhone 16 (iOS 18.0.1)

    • ChatGPT for iOS (1.2024.268)

I’m on a paid sub, and the model I used was 4o. Uropia. :eu:

2 Likes
2

Did you log out of ChatGPT in the browser before you continued writing in the chat history via the app?

1 Like
3

When I noticed it first, I closed the lid on my laptop, so I wasn’t signed on the phone and computer at the same time.

The problem seems to happen when you are quick enough to send a message before the app was able to finish refreshing the conversation.

1 Like
4

I see, the “too fast” aspect…

Well, I never had the problem of my chat histories being gone or overwritten… however, I did have the following twice:
I shared a photo, then an error occurred. I could no longer access ChatGPT on any device. I am also in Europe, so I thought of a protection mechanism regarding data protection. Well, that’s why I always log out now.

1 Like
5

I have a habit that I want to share with you. You might like it too!

My two main browsers are Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition, and I use an Add-On called Firefox Multi-Account Containers that lets you contain a website’s cookies in a dedicated tab.

That way you don’t get tracked, and you also don’t have to worry about logging out all the time. To the website in the container, it would look as if this is where you trail starts and also ends.

You can set websites to always open in a particular container, for example, I contain Google stuff (Search, Collab, YouTube) in a container I called “Big Bro”, and Meta, Instagram, Vercel in a container I called “Le Zuck”, GitHub, Bing, Ecosia, Azure I put in “Gateskeeper”, and so on…

And for OpenAI API Platform, ChatGPT, and this forum, I use my “sama” container. :hugs:

These sites always open in their containers, and if you use a Mozilla account, the containers sync across your devices or in my case Firefox Dev and Firefox, which is incredibly convenient.

They also mention a VPN: I don’t use that, but in theory you should be able to dedicate individual containers to specific geo locations. I think they rent Mullvad’s servers for their network as a third party.

1 Like
6

Thanks for the tip, I’ll give it a try. :hugs: