Did ChatGPT Conversations Leak... Into Google Search Console Results? (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0180013510
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/09/027213/did-chatgpt-conversations-leak-into-google-search-console-results
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/oddest-chatgpt-leaks-yet-cringey-chat-logs-found-in-google-analytics-tool/
Though it normally shows the short phrases or keywords typed into Google which led someone to their site, "starting this September, odd queries, sometimes more than 300 characters long, could also be found" in Google Search Console. And the chats "appeared to be from unwitting people prompting a chatbot to help solve relationship or business problems, who likely expected those conversations would remain private." Jason Packer, owner of analytics consulting firm Quantable, flagged the issue in a [2]detailed blog post last month , telling Ars Technica he'd seen 200 odd queries — including "some pretty crazy ones." (Web optimization consultant Slobodan ManiÄ helped Packer investigate...) Packer points out "nobody clicked share" or were given an option to prevent their chats from being exposed.
> Packer suspected that these queries were connected to [3]reporting from The Information in August that cited sources claiming OpenAI was scraping Google search results to power ChatGPT responses. Sources claimed that OpenAI was leaning on Google to answer prompts to ChatGPT seeking information about current events, like news or sports... "Did OpenAI go so fast that they didn't consider the privacy implications of this, or did they just not care?" Packer posited in his blog... Clearly some of those searches relied on Google, Packer's blog said, mistakenly sending to GSC "whatever" the user says in the prompt box... This means "that OpenAI is sharing any prompt that requires a Google Search with both Google and whoever is doing their scraping," Packer alleged. "And then also with whoever's site shows up in the search results! Yikes."
>
> To Packer, it appeared that "ALL ChatGPT prompts" that used Google Search risked being leaked during the past two months. OpenAI claimed only a small number of queries were leaked but declined to provide a more precise estimate. So, it remains unclear how many of the 700 million people who use ChatGPT each week had prompts routed to Google Search Console.
"Perhaps most troubling to some users — whose identities are not linked in chats unless their prompts perhaps share identifying information — there does not seem to be any way to remove the leaked chats from Google Search Console.."
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/oddest-chatgpt-leaks-yet-cringey-chat-logs-found-in-google-analytics-tool/
[2] https://www.quantable.com/ai/the-old-rules-are-dead/
[3] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-challenging-google-using-search-data
I highly doubt it (Score:2)
Leak means it was unintentional. IMO, it was no leak.
Who cares? (Score:2)
What if I like that I can influence the AI and have it influence others?
What if I convince ChatGPT that printing a strong, generous, inflation-indexed basic income is good policy, and ChatGPT starts convincing others?
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
What if you automatically convert prices to units of purchasing power? So if a loaf of bread goes up 1000%, but your income automatically goes up too, the bread still costs the same in terms of your real purchasing power?
ChatGPT suggests:
What if we stopped treating inflation as a moral failure and just indexed everything automatically? If prices go up, your income goes up too, so your real purchasing power stays the same. A loaf of bread could cost a quadrillion dollars, but that would just be a change in u
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
See how it learned not to use unicode for slashdot?
Privacy and data protection laws (Score:2)
I hope EU regulators comes down on them like a tonne of bricks for GDPR violations. [1]https://commission.europa.eu/l... [europa.eu]
[1] https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
Pissing in your own pool before taking a dive (Score:2)
Wonder what the technological results of all this will be in 3 years with ChatGPT6 or Gemini5, if Google hasn't taken that to it's graveyard already.
I used to work in a Google building (Score:2)
I used to work in a Google building. In the downstairs lobby, after security and in front of the elevators, they had several large TVs mounted on the walls. They showed, in real time, search terms that were being entered into Google. It was interesting to just stand there for a while and watch how many times per second terms were being entered. I recall "sex with my dog" being a common one.
I wonder if, these days, they would have something similar but with chat logs from their AI tool (I don't remember whi
Re: (Score:2)
> I used to work in a Google building. In the downstairs lobby, after security and in front of the elevators, they had several large TVs mounted on the walls. They showed, in real time, search terms that were being entered into Google. It was interesting to just stand there for a while and watch how many times per second terms were being entered. I recall "sex with my dog" being a common one.
Better keep those bastards away from your dog then! 8^)
Giving info to Google (Score:4, Informative)
Giving your information to Google and expecting it to be private is like going to a whore house expecting to be loved.
Just not happening.
You're engaging in a transaction. Your Information for Google's service, or money for sex. That's all that's going on. Any expectations beyond that are simply unrealistic.