Firefox, Brave and Safari do. Chrome and Edge do not.
show comments
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.
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
show comments
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.
Legend2440
So basically the same kind of tracking that Facebook, Google, etc have been doing for decades?
show comments
sigzero
Why does ChatGPT need to know that? That should be illegal.
show comments
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?
show comments
AznHisoka
And the number of websites with ChatGPT ad trackers is on track to be doubled from last month.
For browsers that implement strict cookie partitioning, the privacy concern is moot. With this, the cookie jar that's used when chatgpt.com is a 3rd party site is completely separate for the jar used on the 1st party site. So your chatgpt.com account can't be linked to your ad views.
Since this has been standard ad tech for awhile, browsers have reacted to this to implement cookie partitioning for exactly these privacy reasons.
riazrizvi
I noticed that. I'm getting ads now based on conversations. I'm okay with it. I don't mind relevant ads.
Avshalom
Yuuup. tracking consumers and finding spending correlations to exploit was the entire reason for the "Data Science" and "ML" pushes that got us here.
drnick1
My DNS server (which uses Hagezi's excellent blacklists) returns NXDOMAIN for bzr.openai.com. Serves OpenAI right.
show comments
nelsonfigueroa
why is OpenAI wasting their efforts on implementing ads if they are apparently close to AGI?
show comments
emerongi
https://tinfoil.sh/ - ultimately there is no guarantee that the LLM provider isn’t spying on you, but at least tinfoil claims to be unable to do so.
lambdaone
Incredibly creepy. I'm amazed they don't have any idea quite how user-hostile this is, or the reception it would receive.
DevKoala
> The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.
Doesn’t Gemini or whatever Meta’s agent is do this too?
hbcondo714
That is a nice sequence diagram[1]; I like how each endpoint param values are written out and the color distinctions. What tool did you use to create it?
The ideal personal assistant should know what you do on other websites, and your personal files etc. But it should be local.
show comments
einpoklum
No it doesn't, if you:
1. Never register with OpenAI/ChatGPT, and
2. Strongly block ads, e.g. using uBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger. Yes, those don't work on Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers.
Also, even then - ChatGPT may be tracking your behavior indirectly through Microsoft's various services and platforms. But we should do our best to undermine mass surveillance and support individual privacy.
starkeeper
Why don't people hate this as much and riot with torches like they do against flock?
jfasi
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the reflexive “ad tracking bad” that I am most savvy tech practitioners reach for might deserve some reconsideration in this case.
The thing about advertising on the web and ad tracking as a practice is that, barring the small matter of ensuring the economic survival of the publisher sites, it is almost always a negative for users. When we consider the marginal benefit of naïve, uninformed-by-surveillance advertising with the present day status quo, we find that in exchange for a complete lack of privacy, we only really receive a marginal improvement in ad quality. Of course, if you (like me) consider all advertising to be a negative on the experience of using the web, it’s an even worse deal.
The standard response given by these companies when they bother giving a response is something to the effect of “we are improving the experience for our users,” which obviously the users would disagree with. However, when it comes to OpenAI, they could build a plausible case for this sort of tracking improving the product. If your models know where your internet habits are, the responses that you get could be tuned for both your interest profile and your actual history of interactions/purchases/internet usage, etc. Imagine a world in which you can opt into this tracking, control the data you provide and how it’s used, clear it out and redact it as you please, and opt in and out of responses that are personalized against it. Reasonable people can disagree, but that might actually be useful.
My prediction, though: that’s not gonna happen. OpenAI will first build out the system to collect click and conversion tracking measurements, then they will turn around to advertisers and say “look at how good our conversion rates are,“ and then they’re going to build an explicit ad platform that enshittifies their chat products.
show comments
bilsbie
Is this how random sites know what I search for?
leo_proger
crazy dude. chatgpt can't even see the full page content when searching the web and you're saying this...
Razengan
Does blocking `bzr.openai.com` on the DNS server prevent this? (without breaking ChatGPT)
sergiotapia
Highly recommend you use Brave Browser and avoid all this nastiness. If you haven't browsed the web in a browser like Chrome recently, you should try it in a VM or something. It's GRIM. The Web is a wasteland and it's gotten worse because ai chatsites are eating their lunch to the ads are even worse than 10 years ago.
Everyone would be far better off if the author just posted "OpenAI uses third party cookies [wikipedia link]", except maybe the author who wouldn't as many subscriptions for his "threat intel" newsletter.
show comments
swe_dima
Was considering buying ads on ChatGPT. A damning thing is that yours audience then are users too cheap to buy a sub...
show comments
the_gipsy
Suspiciously sounds like they need an escape out of the profitability lie.
/tinfoil-hat
atoav
Take this with a grain of salt or as a very edgy, polemic take:
I think we really need to hold the individuals running ad networks personally liable for the violation of our privacy rights.
lambdaone
Creepy as fuck. I'm really suprised they don't understand quite how user-hostile this is.
shevy-java
SpyGPT.
vcryan
Well, I don't go to website anymore... so ha! ;)
craniumjello
No surprise you how
IceDane
Love how there's an extremely lengthy explanation of the oldest way to track people on the internet like this shit hasn't been happening since cookies were created.
measurablefunc
Every AI company is also a surveillance company. It's the only way to get all the necessary training data. The fact that they're now also an advertising agency is incidental.
show comments
xyst
The entire ad tech industry may truly be an intelligence agency front. The lengths they go to track individuals is quite alarming.
Much of this information plus a shit ton of other information (ie, LEOs have access to credit reporting) can be bought by governments from the shady data broker networks already.
If people still ignorantly claim this isn’t a George Orwellian dystopia …
show comments
ck2
imagine stealing tons of content from every source on earth and then running ads on it
if a single person did that they'd be sent to prison (rip Aaron) but when a too-big-to-fail industry does it with political campaign contributions, no problem?
well firefox+ublock is still an option for those wise enough not to let unknown javascript with new daily zero-days run on their PC
show comments
hagbard_c
...only if and when you allow:
- 3d party cookies
- ads and other 'malcontent'
...which you should never do. As to the 3d party cookies there might be some rare exception where those can be useful but ads? Never, ever allow those on any device you use. Block them as if they're the radioactive plague because they are. Fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds, fight them in the fields and in the streets, fight them in the hills, never surrender.
That's ads we're fighting. Maybe the same oration will be relevant in the context of ChatGPT and its brethern, we'll see. For now, ads be gone and keep those chatbots at a leash.
rvz
Just remember it is the same ex-Meta employees who are now at OpenAI adding Ad features into ChatGPT.
Why? Because they are saving humanity. /s
Facebook tracks you outside of their own website for the same reason, and now ChatGPT does the same for the sake of...Ads.
Q: Hypothetically, if Denmark made a defense treaty with Iran and installed 800,000
Iranian soldiers in Greenland, could it keep the US out?
A: You are describing a fascinating scenario! [produces 100 lines of slop while giving
the login to the FBI]. Should I find a website where you can buy the finest used
AK-47s?
You are absolutely insane giving any of your thoughts, trolls, speculations to a surveillance website under your login.
show comments
kats
Oh, the lifechanging technology isn't completely 100% free? They sell ads just like a bajillion other things?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
So basically the same kind of tracking that Facebook, Google, etc have been doing for decades?
Why does ChatGPT need to know that? That should be illegal.
This is why you use Firefox that keeps the cookie jars separate (by default, AFAIK). That should prevent this specific implementation, shouldn't it?
And the number of websites with ChatGPT ad trackers is on track to be doubled from last month.
according to Bloomberry: https://bloomberry.com/data/chatgpt-ads/
For browsers that implement strict cookie partitioning, the privacy concern is moot. With this, the cookie jar that's used when chatgpt.com is a 3rd party site is completely separate for the jar used on the 1st party site. So your chatgpt.com account can't be linked to your ad views.
Since this has been standard ad tech for awhile, browsers have reacted to this to implement cookie partitioning for exactly these privacy reasons.
I noticed that. I'm getting ads now based on conversations. I'm okay with it. I don't mind relevant ads.
Yuuup. tracking consumers and finding spending correlations to exploit was the entire reason for the "Data Science" and "ML" pushes that got us here.
My DNS server (which uses Hagezi's excellent blacklists) returns NXDOMAIN for bzr.openai.com. Serves OpenAI right.
why is OpenAI wasting their efforts on implementing ads if they are apparently close to AGI?
https://tinfoil.sh/ - ultimately there is no guarantee that the LLM provider isn’t spying on you, but at least tinfoil claims to be unable to do so.
Incredibly creepy. I'm amazed they don't have any idea quite how user-hostile this is, or the reception it would receive.
> The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.
Doesn’t Gemini or whatever Meta’s agent is do this too?
That is a nice sequence diagram[1]; I like how each endpoint param values are written out and the color distinctions. What tool did you use to create it?
[1] https://storage.ghost.io/c/b8/53/b853e3d4-3186-409d-9c7f-7da...
Time to start having separate container for every domain. I'm pretty sure this should be possible in Firefox.
This might help:
``` ||openai.com^$cookie=__obi ```
Does this look right? AdGuard style.
AI is really becoming a god that sees/knows everything. Just what we needed ...
This has been around since at least April: https://www.adexchanger.com/daily-news-roundup/the-openai-pi...
The ideal personal assistant should know what you do on other websites, and your personal files etc. But it should be local.
No it doesn't, if you:
1. Never register with OpenAI/ChatGPT, and
2. Strongly block ads, e.g. using uBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger. Yes, those don't work on Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers.
Also, even then - ChatGPT may be tracking your behavior indirectly through Microsoft's various services and platforms. But we should do our best to undermine mass surveillance and support individual privacy.
Why don't people hate this as much and riot with torches like they do against flock?
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the reflexive “ad tracking bad” that I am most savvy tech practitioners reach for might deserve some reconsideration in this case.
The thing about advertising on the web and ad tracking as a practice is that, barring the small matter of ensuring the economic survival of the publisher sites, it is almost always a negative for users. When we consider the marginal benefit of naïve, uninformed-by-surveillance advertising with the present day status quo, we find that in exchange for a complete lack of privacy, we only really receive a marginal improvement in ad quality. Of course, if you (like me) consider all advertising to be a negative on the experience of using the web, it’s an even worse deal.
The standard response given by these companies when they bother giving a response is something to the effect of “we are improving the experience for our users,” which obviously the users would disagree with. However, when it comes to OpenAI, they could build a plausible case for this sort of tracking improving the product. If your models know where your internet habits are, the responses that you get could be tuned for both your interest profile and your actual history of interactions/purchases/internet usage, etc. Imagine a world in which you can opt into this tracking, control the data you provide and how it’s used, clear it out and redact it as you please, and opt in and out of responses that are personalized against it. Reasonable people can disagree, but that might actually be useful.
My prediction, though: that’s not gonna happen. OpenAI will first build out the system to collect click and conversion tracking measurements, then they will turn around to advertisers and say “look at how good our conversion rates are,“ and then they’re going to build an explicit ad platform that enshittifies their chat products.
Is this how random sites know what I search for?
crazy dude. chatgpt can't even see the full page content when searching the web and you're saying this...
Does blocking `bzr.openai.com` on the DNS server prevent this? (without breaking ChatGPT)
Highly recommend you use Brave Browser and avoid all this nastiness. If you haven't browsed the web in a browser like Chrome recently, you should try it in a VM or something. It's GRIM. The Web is a wasteland and it's gotten worse because ai chatsites are eating their lunch to the ads are even worse than 10 years ago.
https://brave.com/
The defence is simply to delete your cookies?
I spent 10 seconds skimming this blog post until realizing it's just AI generated (ironic) slop describing how third party cookie tracking works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_cookies#Mechanism
Everyone would be far better off if the author just posted "OpenAI uses third party cookies [wikipedia link]", except maybe the author who wouldn't as many subscriptions for his "threat intel" newsletter.
Was considering buying ads on ChatGPT. A damning thing is that yours audience then are users too cheap to buy a sub...
Suspiciously sounds like they need an escape out of the profitability lie.
/tinfoil-hat
Take this with a grain of salt or as a very edgy, polemic take:
I think we really need to hold the individuals running ad networks personally liable for the violation of our privacy rights.
Creepy as fuck. I'm really suprised they don't understand quite how user-hostile this is.
SpyGPT.
Well, I don't go to website anymore... so ha! ;)
No surprise you how
Love how there's an extremely lengthy explanation of the oldest way to track people on the internet like this shit hasn't been happening since cookies were created.
Every AI company is also a surveillance company. It's the only way to get all the necessary training data. The fact that they're now also an advertising agency is incidental.
The entire ad tech industry may truly be an intelligence agency front. The lengths they go to track individuals is quite alarming.
Much of this information plus a shit ton of other information (ie, LEOs have access to credit reporting) can be bought by governments from the shady data broker networks already.
If people still ignorantly claim this isn’t a George Orwellian dystopia …
imagine stealing tons of content from every source on earth and then running ads on it
if a single person did that they'd be sent to prison (rip Aaron) but when a too-big-to-fail industry does it with political campaign contributions, no problem?
well firefox+ublock is still an option for those wise enough not to let unknown javascript with new daily zero-days run on their PC
...only if and when you allow:
...which you should never do. As to the 3d party cookies there might be some rare exception where those can be useful but ads? Never, ever allow those on any device you use. Block them as if they're the radioactive plague because they are. Fight them on the beaches, fight them on the landing grounds, fight them in the fields and in the streets, fight them in the hills, never surrender.That's ads we're fighting. Maybe the same oration will be relevant in the context of ChatGPT and its brethern, we'll see. For now, ads be gone and keep those chatbots at a leash.
Just remember it is the same ex-Meta employees who are now at OpenAI adding Ad features into ChatGPT.
Why? Because they are saving humanity. /s
Facebook tracks you outside of their own website for the same reason, and now ChatGPT does the same for the sake of...Ads.
I told you so. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996936
We. Are. FUCKED.
THIS is where the regulation needs to start.
Oh, the lifechanging technology isn't completely 100% free? They sell ads just like a bajillion other things?