Six questions to ask before trusting an AI agent with your digital life

Why AI agent access is a big deal

AI agents are exciting tools with huge potential to make your life easier. But in order to do their job, they often require extensive device-level permissions. That can include access to sensitive data.

Think about how much personal information you have stored about yourself and your loved ones on your phone and computer. Many popular AI agent services now request access to emails, calendars, files, contacts, and connected accounts to function. Whether or not that’s necessary depends on what you need the AI agent to do, so you need to be discerning.

Depending on the service, your personal information may be:

• Shared with third-party providers.
• Used to train or improve AI models.
• Stored for longer than you’d expect.
• Exposed if the service experiences a data breach.

To help you keep your personal data safer as you start experimenting with AI agents, Norton has narrowed down the most important questions you should ask before trusting one with your digital life.

Six questions Norton recommends asking before connecting an AI agent

Concerns over AI access are reasonable because the risks are real. Survey research from Norton* found that among parents of K–12 children, nearly one in four (23%) say their biggest concern about using an AI agent to manage family tasks is that it would need access to their email, calendar, or messages, as this type of access feels invasive. Another one in seven (14%) say their biggest worry is that they don’t trust where their data goes or who could access it.

It’s not just about avoiding AI scams anymore, but rather how to trust seemingly legitimate AI products. With that in mind, here is a checklist of questions to run through and ask yourself before you grant an AI agent access.

1. What information is the AI agent collecting?

Start with actually reading the permissions screen. This may sound tedious, but you need to decide if the agent should be able to access your entire inbox to perform the task you’ve asked for and beyond. For instance, does it really need to see your contacts, calendar, files, or private messages? If the level of access feels disproportionate to what you’re getting in return, that should give you pause.

2. How is collected information used?

Check how the service collects, stores, and uses your data. This means paying particular attention to whether your conversations or connected account data can be used to train or improve AI models. You may have to search for this disclaimer, as this common practice is not always clearly disclosed.

3. Who else could potentially see your data?

Once you start taking a closer look, you’ll realize that AI services often rely on third-party models, platforms, and infrastructure providers. Look for clear information about whether your data can be shared with those third parties, and what those companies are permitted to do with it. A company’s cyber defenses might only be as strong as those of the third parties it partners with, and mistakes by vendors are a common cause of data breaches.

4. What control do you have over the data it shares?

Granting temporary access doesn’t automatically mean the information an agent encounters disappears afterward. Check what the company’s privacy policy says about data retention, deletion timelines, and whether you can request removal. There may be a setting that lets you opt out of AI training and long-term data storage.

5. How independent is the AI agent?

One of the main differences between AI agents and AI chatbots is that agents can take action for you. There’s a big difference between a chatbot reading an email and summarizing it, and an AI agent sending one in your name. Before connecting any agent, understand what actions it can take autonomously. Can it independently make purchases, submit forms, book appointments, or take other real-world actions without asking you first?

6. Does the AI agent protect against bad actors?

AI is a rapidly evolving technology, and cybercriminals are using it for their own purposes, too. Bad actors can try to manipulate AI agents using prompt injection attacks, where they leave malicious instructions designed to trick AI agents into disclosing sensitive data or taking other harmful actions.

If you’re trusting an AI agent to work on your behalf, make sure it includes a reliable security layer. The agent should be able to tell legitimate websites from potentially dangerous ones, know not to expose your sensitive information, and include safeguards that help prevent it from installing malicious software.

What and who to trust in the era of AI agents

In a short time, AI has become seemingly indispensable, turning everything from sorting and summarizing your emails to organizing your weekly grocery list into something you can do in minutes instead of a tedious chore.

As people start to trust AI agents with personal information and real-world tasks, security and privacy become more important. Unfortunately, not all AI agents are built the same way. People are right to pay attention to what they offer as far as security and privacy.

Norton Family Assistant was built to help you solve problems, like keeping everyone’s appointments straight and flagging upcoming school events. Simply put, it’s designed specifically for families managing the everyday complexity and to-do lists of modern life.

Norton’s approach to AI assistance sets it apart. For us, security, privacy, and user control aren’t afterthoughts, and they never should be.

“People are telling us they want help, but they also want to know they’re still in control,” Jagani said. “That’s the opportunity with AI agents. We can make them genuinely useful while building security, privacy, and transparency into the experience from the beginning.”

Strike a balance between convenience and control

Many people, understandably, want to stay in control of what AI can access and do. That’s more than fair, and it’s doable.

If you’re looking to hand off tasks like tracking school communications, juggling schedules, and managing reminders scattered across multiple apps and inboxes, try a trusted AI agent like Norton Family Assistant. It’s designed to give families the convenience of AI assistance without requiring them to sacrifice visibility or control over their own data.

Before you connect the next AI agent that promises to simplify your life, run through our six-question checklist. The five minutes that it takes could save you from handing over far more than you intended.