Can My Employer See My Copilot Chats? Yes, on a Work Account

Yes, if you use Copilot with your work or school account. Microsoft's own privacy page says that when you use Microsoft 365 Copilot, "the stored data includes the user's prompt and Copilot's response", and that "admins can use Content search or Microsoft Purview" to view and manage it. The copies sit in a hidden folder of your work mailbox, next to your email and Teams chats. Your manager cannot open your Copilot history. A compliance admin with an eDiscovery role can search it, export it and keep it after you delete it. On a personal Microsoft account, your employer has no access to your Copilot chats through the account. We tested what a work network sees when you use consumer Copilot: the site name, not the prompts, unless the company decrypts traffic or manages the laptop.

Microsoft has renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot to Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat to Microsoft Copilot Chat. The rules below apply to both, whenever you sign in with a work account. GitHub Copilot is a different product and is not covered here.

The same question for other tools is answered in can my employer see my ChatGPT history and can my employer see my Claude chats.

Who can see your Copilot chats

In a small company one IT person often holds several of these roles, so "IT can read my Copilot chats" is usually true in practice.

Sources are Microsoft Learn pages read on 27 September: "Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot", "Learn about retention for Copilot & AI apps", "Audit logs for Copilot and AI applications", "Configure a Communication Compliance policy to detect generative AI interactions" and "Microsoft Copilot usage report".

Where your Copilot prompts are stored

Every time you ask Copilot something in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams or Copilot Chat, Microsoft stores the prompt and the answer, including the citations to the files it used. Microsoft calls this record your Copilot activity history. It is what lets you scroll back through old Copilot chats.

Behind the scenes, Microsoft uses your Exchange Online mailbox. The retention article says the data "is stored in a hidden folder in the mailbox of the user who runs the AI app". Neither you nor an admin can browse that folder in Outlook. It exists so that compliance admins can search it with eDiscovery tools, the same tools they use for email and Teams chats.

That has two consequences:

• • Anything that holds your mailbox holds your Copilot chats. A litigation hold, an eDiscovery hold or a retention policy on your mailbox also keeps your Copilot history.
• • A search for a word finds it in Copilot too. When a legal team searches your mailbox for a project name, your Copilot prompts that mention it come back with your emails.

What admins can do with your Copilot history

Search and export it. A compliance admin opens Microsoft Purview, picks your mailbox and searches for Copilot interactions. The results can be reviewed or exported. This is the same step used for reading Teams chats, so companies that already run eDiscovery get Copilot with no extra setup.

Keep it after you delete it. You can delete your Copilot activity history from the My Account portal. If a retention policy or a hold applies, Microsoft moves the data to another hidden folder, SubstrateHolds, and keeps it there until the policy allows deletion. Your history looks empty to you, while eDiscovery still finds the copies.

Log every interaction. Purview Audit writes a CopilotInteraction record each time you use Copilot. The record names the user, the time, the host app (for example BizChat for Copilot Chat, or Word) and the files, sites and emails Copilot read to answer. It does not carry the prompt text, but it shows which documents you asked about.

Scan it for policy matches. Communication Compliance can analyze Copilot prompts and responses for things like confidential data, harassment or regulatory terms, and send matches to named reviewers. Microsoft says usernames are pseudonymized by default in that tool, and investigators must be opted in by an admin.

Count your usage. The Copilot usage report shows each enabled user's last activity date in each Copilot app, and it can be exported to a spreadsheet. It shows that you use Copilot, not what you asked.

Personal Copilot on a work computer

The consumer Copilot app, signed in with your own Microsoft account, is not part of your company's Microsoft 365. Your employer cannot export or search it through the account.

The laptop is a separate question. We tested what a work network can learn from a visit to consumer Copilot, on 2 October 2026 from a Mac (macOS 26.5.2). The first message a browser sends to open a secure connection, the TLS ClientHello, carries the site name in plain text. This Python script builds that message the way a browser does and checks for the name:

import ssl
ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
incoming, outgoing = ssl.MemoryBIO(), ssl.MemoryBIO()
tls = ctx.wrap_bio(incoming, outgoing, server_hostname="copilot.microsoft.com")
try:
    tls.do_handshake()
except ssl.SSLWantReadError:
    pass
hello = outgoing.read()  # the first bytes the laptop sends
print(len(hello), "bytes; site name readable:", b"copilot.microsoft.com" in hello)

Output:

1526 bytes; site name readable: True

So a company firewall or web filter can log that you opened copilot.microsoft.com and when, without any software on the laptop. It cannot read the prompts, because they travel inside the encrypted connection. The exception is a company that decrypts traffic with its own certificate. You can check for that in two commands:

echo | openssl s_client -connect copilot.microsoft.com:443 -servername copilot.microsoft.com 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -issuer
profiles status -type enrollment

On our Mac the certificate came from Microsoft itself, and the Mac was not enrolled in device management:

issuer=C=US, O=Microsoft Corporation, CN=Microsoft TLS G2 RSA CA OCSP 04
Enrolled via DEP: No
MDM enrollment: No

If the issuer on your work laptop names your company or a security vendor such as Zscaler or Netskope, traffic is being decrypted and your prompts can be read on the way. If MDM enrollment says Yes, the company manages the device and can install software that records what you type. Microsoft's retention article also lists "Microsoft Copilot (consumer version)", ChatGPT, Google Gemini and DeepSeek as AI apps that Purview can capture on company-managed devices and browsers. More on device monitoring is in can my employer see my browsing history and can my employer see my screen.

On your own phone or home computer, with your personal Microsoft account, your employer has no access to your Copilot chats.

How to tell which Copilot you are using

FAQ

Can my employer see what I ask Copilot in Teams? Yes. Copilot chats in Teams are stored like other Copilot interactions, and admins can also read them through the Teams Export APIs.

Does using Copilot in a private browser window hide it? Not from the network. The site name goes out in the ClientHello the same way, and a company-managed device can still record what you type. A private window only keeps the history off the laptop.