ChatGPT Tea
A researcher says ChatGPT's ad cookie follows users onto advertiser sites
755 HN points Developing 2 sources
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ChatGPT
Tool Sep 22, 2026
OpenAI's consumer and workplace AI assistant.
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What happened lately
ChatGPT timeline
What it is
ChatGPT is OpenAI’s general-purpose assistant for writing, analysis, research, coding and agent-like tasks. Its scale makes changes to account data, advertising and tracking relevant far beyond a typical software feature release.
Why it is being watched
An independent technical investigation claims OpenAI’s advertiser pixel can receive a cookie associated with the .openai.com domain alongside page-level data from participating advertiser sites. The report says it observed 936 distinct advertiser pixels across 1,029 hostnames.
What is not settled
The report documents a mechanism and says OpenAI support acknowledged the cookie, but that is not the same as a complete account of how OpenAI stores, links or uses the resulting data. Independent reproduction and a detailed OpenAI response are still needed.
Watch point
Look for a public OpenAI explanation covering consent categories, account linkage, retention, advertiser access and opt-out behavior. Until then, this should be treated as a developing privacy story rather than a closed conclusion.