Security Stop-Press : Data Brokers Selling AI Chat Transcripts

Published 10 March 2026

Researchers warn that private conversations with AI chatbots may be ending up in commercial databases sold by data brokers.

It’s been reported that AI visibility researcher Lee S Dryburgh found that some browser extensions marketed as free VPNs or ad blockers can intercept traffic to services such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and DeepSeek, capturing both prompts and responses before they reach the chatbot provider.

Dryburgh’s analysis reportedly uncovered about 490 prompts from more than 435 users across sensitive topics including medical issues, financial problems and immigration questions, with some conversations containing identifiable personal details.

For businesses, the lesson is to void entering confidential information into public AI chat tools and restrict untrusted browser extensions, which can capture sensitive data before it even reaches the AI service.