ChatGPT ads can target you by phone number, email, and your prompts
404 Media · rss · 2026-10-15
- 404 Media ran ads inside ChatGPT and found OpenAI lets advertisers target users via raw email addresses, phone numbers, Android ad IDs, and even users' prompts.
- Advertisers can upload raw (unhashed) personal data that OpenAI matches to real ChatGPT users; inclusion targeting requires 25,000+ matched entries, otherwise lists only work for exclusion. Meta hashes uploads automatically; OpenAI wouldn't say if it does the same, only that files are deleted within 24 hours.
- Prompt-based targeting is novel: users may assume chats are private, but prompts feed ad matching. Opting out of personalization doesn't stop ads based on the current chat.
- Third-party ChatGPT Ad Library has captured 43,410 ads across 415,289 placements, mapping which prompts trigger which ads.
- Industry voices call for data broker laws covering advertisers uploading PII to OpenAI.
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