Azure OpenAI Data Retention Privacy 2025

Question

Azure OpenAI Data Retention Privacy 2025

Simon 15

I’m viewing the Privacy page for Azure OpenAI Service here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/cognitive-services/openai/data-privacy?tabs=azure-portal

A previous version of this page stated (validated via Web Archive snapshot 23 Sept 2024):

To detect and mitigate abuse, Azure OpenAl stores all prompts and generated content securely for up to thirty (30) days.

This has been removed since, and I can’t find any reference to the 30 days on any other related page.

Is this 30 day prompt storage retention policy still in place?

If so, can someone please share a link to documentation that confirms this? If not, what is the new policy?

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Answer 1

Vikram Singh 2,585 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hello @Simon

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A and thank you for posting your questions here.

I understand you're looking for updated information regarding the data retention policy for Azure OpenAI Service, specifically the 30-day prompt storage retention policy.

As of the latest updates, Azure OpenAI Service retains prompts and generated content for up to 30 days to detect and mitigate abuse. This data is stored securely within Microsoft's Azure environment and is not accessible to other customers or OpenAI. The data is encrypted both in transit and at rest to ensure security.

If your application is approved for modified abuse monitoring, Azure OpenAI will not store any prompts and completions associated with the approved subscription. Approval depends on the specific use case and compliance with Microsoft's guidelines.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the Microsoft Products and Services Data Protection Addendum (DPA)

Please do not forget to "Accept the answer” and “up-vote” wherever the information provided helps you, this can be beneficial to other community members.

Thanks

Simon 15 Reputation points

2025-02-25T19:31:32.1633333+00:00

Hi Vikram,

Thanks for that. What’s confusing is the Azure OpenAI Service privacy page I linked, under ‘Preventing abuse and harmful content generation’ states:

For AI review, customer’s prompts and completions are not stored by the system or used to train the LLM or other systems. For human review, the data store where prompts and completions are stored is logically separated by customer resource

Which suggests that content is only stored when flagged for human review. Again, an older version of the privacy page explicitly stated 30 days retention for abuse detection, but now there’s no reference to this on any privacy page I can find. Is this information only available via support, or is there a public privacy policy confirming this? If this is still the active policy why was it removed from the privacy page? I don’t mean to be difficult, I’m honestly just confused.

Similarly, in the DPA you shared the only reference to retention I see is under ‘Data Retention and Deletion’ where again, I cannot find any reference to the 30 day retention policy for OpenAI prompt data.
Sebastian Bensland 15 Reputation points

2025-02-25T20:04:01.9466667+00:00

Why would you remove the 30 days reference in your documentation?
Vikram Singh 2,585 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-02-28T13:10:28.78+00:00

Hello @Simon

We have escalated the query to the documentation team, and we will provide more details as soon as we receive further information.

I hope this helps.

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Azure OpenAI Data Retention Privacy 2025

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