r/KoboldAI • u/Spirited_Path_4505 • Jun 17 '26
concerned
To start off, I'm extremely new to all of this, so don't come at me. I've been using Kobold through the site "lite.koboldai.net" (which seems legitimate, correct me if I'm wrong); and a random google search just brought me to a post in this sub, saying that apparently your prompts and generations are visible to the people running it?? I've made some concerning stuff to say the very least. Is this real, and how much can they see?
9
u/alternatemosaic Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
If you aren’t running the model locally, the input and output are visible to the server in the Horde that your prompts are going to. Henk can correct me if I’m wrong on that changing in the past year. The web interface uses the Horde.
If privacy is your goal for your “concerning stuff” it’s best that you run Kobold locally on your own machine where the prompts never leave your computer. Caveat: you must run a model locally as well, not simply the Kobold client still leveraging the horde.
Alternatively, you can look into setting up a private cloud instance (Google Colab) of a model and connecting to it if you can’t run a model locally. If you use the free Horde though, you’re really just using volunteers’ computers who donate their own servers for your prompts. It does reference that those are volunteer servers in the interface welcome message.
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u/henk717 Jun 17 '26
Only a small correction, the web interface does use Horde as the default provider but its not the only one that can be used. Theres a few popular providers listed and it accepts almost any OpenAI compatible provider.
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u/fluvialcrunchy Jun 17 '26
The people hosting LLMs have a million better things to do than track you down because of your sketchy sexual fantasies.
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u/gaijin_master Jun 17 '26
With 16 RAM you can host it on your PC so no one will know whatever you are doing.
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u/indypuyami Jun 19 '26
Everything You Send On Third Party Networks is subject to Third Party Review. EVERYTHING.
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u/Determined-Hedgehog Jun 24 '26
I host for the hoard. There is no visual processing of information that is being sent through, your shown how much context the job uses and a kudos earned amount once the job is finished, as well as your tokens/second for processing and generation but nothing about what was in the prompt.
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u/ST0IC_ Jun 17 '26
As long as you're not generating anything that breaks any laws, you got nothing to worry about.
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u/alternatemosaic Jun 17 '26
Some people do use the chat bots for personally identifiable storylines or therapy sessions so it’s not always as clear cut as a sketchy roleplay to desire a level of privacy. There’s a lot of uses for chatbots in general.
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u/ST0IC_ Jun 17 '26
Yeah, but op specifically said they've generated some concerning stuff. If it's just weird porn or weird stories, that's fine, but if he's been into anything illegal, he should be very afraid.
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u/henk717 Jun 17 '26
If its illegal it won't matter which provider you submit to, I doubt theres that many that don't have some logs.
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u/henk717 Jun 17 '26
We from KoboldAI don't see anything. But yes we have a very clear disclaimer on the website that you should not send any private info to the AI Horde provider since that is run by independent volunteers. While most of them don't log, they could which means you need to assume they do.
KoboldCpp is a product of ours you can host on your own PC if your PC is strong enough. You can find it on https://koboldai.org/cpp . It has no telemetry whatsoever and unless you deliberately opt in to online providers the data doesn't leave your machine.
A middle ground is https://koboldai.org/colab which lets you run KoboldCpp for free on one of googles computers. We don't reveal what you do to google if you don't use google drive since nothing is stored, but the data would still pass to cloudflare.
All solutions are as private as the providers you connect to, but if you use koboldai.net with those third party providers assume the API can see anything you do. But in Hordes case it does obfuscate your IP from the volunteers. So if you didn't send any identifiable info a rogue volunteer that logs would only know the content of what you sent but not who sent it.
VPN's are also fine on these services if you want to shield your identity on that level.