ChatGPT can track your activity on other sites - Fact Check
Question asked:
“ChatGPT can check what you are doing on other websites.”
Summary
OpenAI has implemented an analytics cookie that allows ChatGPT to receive data about a user’s activity on participating third‑party websites, enabling cross‑site tracking. This capability is not a built‑in feature of the chat interface itself but operates through the tracking mechanism identified by researchers in 2026. Consequently, ChatGPT can indeed check what you are doing on other sites via this cookie‑based system.
Sources 60 searched
- Can My Boss Read My ChatGPT Queries? How Private Are My Searches?
Along with asking the right questions, it may be possible to use a third-party service to check worker activity on ChatGPT. These tools aren’t built into ChatGPT, but learning about other workers’ prompts via a third-party tool is certainly ...
- ChatGPT Ad Collector Tracks User Activity Across Third-Party Advertiser Websites
A newly documented OpenAI advertising mechanism may allow the company to associate activity on participating advertiser websites with ChatGPT user identities through a cross-site cookie, according to independent network-traffic analysis.
- ChatGPT now knows what you’re up to on other websites | The Independent
OpenAI has added an “analytics cookie” to ChatGPT that allows it to track user activity across other websites. Cyber security researcher Buchodi monitored the tracking mechanism for several months across thousands of websites, revealing ...
- ChatGPT Tracks Your Web Activity via Ad Data | Yuri Island
ChatGPT Now Tracks Your Activity on Other Websites via Ad Collector
- Can ChatGPT Know What Websites You Have Visited?
The bottom line is a qualified no: ChatGPT does not automatically and secretly read a user’s full browser history, but it can and does collect and retain browsing-related data when browsing features are used or when sessions generate technical logs; enterprise controls, operator modes, and ...
- How to Track Employee ChatGPT Use: 6 Methods Compared (2026) | Worklytics
If your organization has deployed ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Team, or ChatGPT Edu, tracking is largely built in. OpenAI's Enterprise Compliance API and the Admin Workspace surface user-level analytics: total messages, active users by day, week, and month, average prompts per user, GPT and tool usage breakdowns, and SSO-mapped user identities.
- OpenAI ChatGPT tracks user activity across websites via cookie | KuCoin
A researcher named Buchodi has found that OpenAI's ChatGPT tracks user activity across websites using a cookie named __obi. Whale trading activity patterns may be influenced by such tracking.
- OpenAI Exposed: ChatGPT Can Track Your Purchases on Other Websites – What You Need to Know
It is only generated approximately once every five times, and the mobile web version of ChatGPT does not trigger this mechanism at all. Buchodi also noted the most critical point: he can only prove that the data is sent to OpenAI's server, and ...
- Can You See Who Uses ChatGPT on Analytic Platforms? | Blue Interactive Agency
While it is possible to detect some traffic influenced by ChatGPT, user data is generally anonymized, and referral tracking is often incomplete or obscured by how LLMs interact with web content.
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