Privacy, Security, and Responsible Use in Cursor AI

As we integrate powerful AI tools into our daily workflows, our responsibilities as engineers expand. The ability to generate code at an accelerated pace comes with the critical need to manage data security, protect sensitive information, and consider the ethical implications of our work. Using an AI assistant is not just a matter of productivity; it is a matter of trust and professional diligence.

In this lesson, we will address these crucial topics head-on. We will take a deep dive into Cursor’s privacy and security features, trace the flow of data when we interact with the AI, and establish a framework of best practices for using these tools responsibly. This knowledge is essential for any developer using AI in a commercial or enterprise setting, where the consequences of a data breach or intellectual property leak can be severe.

A deep dive into Cursor’s Privacy Mode

Cursor’s most important security feature is its Privacy Mode. When enabled, it provides strong assurances about how our code is handled. We can find this setting in Settings > General > Privacy mode.

When Privacy Mode is enabled:

• Zero data retention for code: Cursor’s policy is that none of our code is saved or stored on their servers. The code we write in the editor remains on our local machine. This is a fundamental guarantee that prevents our proprietary codebase from being inadvertently logged or collected by the editor itself.

• Ephemeral LLM context: When we send a prompt that includes code context, that data is sent to a third-party large language model (LLM) like OpenAI or Anthropic to generate a response. However, this data is used ephemerally, meaning it is processed in-memory to generate the response and ...