02/10/2026
Everything You Told ChatGPT Was Private. They Just Sold It.
"Your fears. Your business secrets. Your health questions. Your financial worries. Years of conversations you never would have had out loud, now feeding an ad machine...."
"Think of it this way: If someone photocopied your entire private journal and used it to build a detailed profile of your fears, desires, health concerns, and financial situation, then handed copies to their friends, giving you the option to “opt out” doesn’t delete the copies. It just means they’ll delete the first photocopy and stop copying new pages. That is what happened here."
Your fears. Your business secrets. Your health questions. Your financial worries. Years of conversations you never would have had out loud, now feeding an ad machine. The bottom line, before you read another word: OpenAI's own documentation confirms that "past chats," including conversations from mo...