I’m asking for my cousin who lives in the US.
In the last couple of months, various online platforms have opted their users into having their AI trained on our data. Among those companies include Twitter, LinkedIn, and PayPal.
My cousin lives in the US and has been using a VPN 24/7 for a few years, with an EU location as her default. When she was prompted by the media and the privacy community to disable AI training in the platforms mentioned above, she realized that the settings to disable AI training were not available to her on LinkedIn and PayPal.
EU EXEMPT FROM AI TRAINING BY DEFAULT?
Her guess is it’s because of her VPN location which has always been set to the same EU country for a long time, and EU countries are not opted in by AI training for PayPal and LinkedIn, because they are protected by GDPR.
Is that true? Because as explained, if she follows the directions to disable AI training in LinkedIn and PayPal, she won’t find the settings, like most people (mostly Americans) on the internet seem to have.
WHAT SHOULD SHE DO?
If she is correct, should she use her real IP or a US VPN location to disable the AI training settings? Because although her IP address says she’s in the EU, her LinkedIn Profile says she lives and works in Miami. Similarly, her PayPal is a US PayPal account with US credit cards.
PayPal doesn’t allow changing countries with the same account. If you live in the US and have a US PayPal account, you can use it from anywhere in the world, even with an EU IP address, but it’s still a US PayPal account. Same if you have a UK PayPal account.
If you’re American and move from the US to the UK, and want a UK PayPal account, you will have to create a 2nd PayPal account. You won’t be able to use your American PayPal account, and change it to UK account.
My point is, if you have a US PayPal account, and you constantly log into it from an EU IP address, whether that EU IP is from a VPN or you are actually in the EU, PayaPal still technically knows that your account is tied to the US. And yet, the settings to disable AI are apparently not visible if you have an EU IP.
What is the best course of action for her?
1) Leave it as is, and continue logging into her LinkedIn and PayPal accounts from an EU IP.
or
2) Use a US IP, and change the settings to disable AI training