OpenAI's ad collector links your ChatGPT account to your browsing on 12 sites
ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector
OpenAI's ad collector sets a cookie called __obi on .openai.com, tied to your ChatGPT account. When you visit sites that use OpenAI's measurement pixel, that cookie is sent back, revealing what you browse and buy. The author reproduced the mechanism on a phone, verified with two capture methods, and observed one __obi value sent from 12 commercial websites including Chewy, Wayfair, and HelloFresh. OpenAI classifies __obi as an analytics cookie and did not answer questions about it.
The first row is particularly interesting. The pixel SDK has a code path that omits credentials, and it does not help: the browser attaches cookies to the <script src> request that loads the SDK before any of OpenAI's code runs.
- thih9
I am once again happy that the EU is fighting practices like these via legislation.
Some outcomes can be annoying, but the net result is still positive, for the consumers and their data privacy at least.
- mavsman
To me, this quote just about sums it up:
> The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.
As someone who has been well aware of this mechanism for quite some time, I still feel icky anytime I re-read the details of it.
What a time to be alive.
- duhhhhh1212
https://www.pangram.com/history/c3ad864f-2a50-4785-a0ef-71f2...
why not use your own words? If you are gonna ai generate this blog, just post the prompts instead.
- luke5441
MDN lists how different browsers prevent this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/Guides/...
Firefox, Brave and Safari do. Chrome and Edge do not.
- 1saadcodes
The technology isn't anything new but, it's the context that makes it so uncomfortable.
People have very different "expectations" of privacy when they're having a conversation with an AI VS when they're browsing something like Facebook
Not to mention Facebook is free whereas you pay for a GPT subscription
- exceptione
The surveillance economy hits again. The only business model they can think of. Combined with state capture this gives unprecedented power over the Average Joe, who will hand his life, his soul and his vote to Big Brother without a thought.
- robots0only
This is incredibly sad, with google you can atleast use the argument that search was free (which is still weak IMO). But with OAI collecting indiscriminate data on paying customers is just incredibly sad.
- Legend2440
So basically the same kind of tracking that Facebook, Google, etc have been doing for decades?
- sigzero
Why does ChatGPT need to know that? That should be illegal.
- tgsovlerkhgsel
This is why you use Firefox that keeps the cookie jars separate (by default, AFAIK). That should prevent this specific implementation, shouldn't it?