Perplexity's 'Incognito Mode' Is a 'Sham,' Lawsuit Says 5
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity's AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users' knowledge or consent. "This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account," the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that "enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users" are shared.
Using developer tools, the lawsuit found that opening prompts are always shared, as are any follow-up questions the search engine asks that a user clicks on. Privacy concerns are seemingly worse for non-subscribed users, the complaint alleged. Their initial prompts are shared with "a URL through which the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google." Disturbingly, the lawsuit alleged, chats are also shared with personally identifiable information (PII), even when users who want to stay anonymous opt to use Perplexity's "Incognito Mode." That mode, the lawsuit charged, is a "sham."
"'Incognito' mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google," the complaint said. "Even paid users who turned on the 'Incognito' feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them." "Perplexity's failure to inform its users that their personal information has been disclosed to Meta and Google or to take any steps to halt the continued disclosure of users' information is malicious, oppressive, and in reckless disregard" of users' rights, the lawsuit alleged.
"Nothing on Perplexity's website warns users that their conversations with its AI Machine will be shared with Meta and Google," Doe alleged. "Much less does Perplexity warn subscribed users that its 'Incognito Mode' does not function to protect users' private conversations from disclosure to companies like Meta and Google."
Using developer tools, the lawsuit found that opening prompts are always shared, as are any follow-up questions the search engine asks that a user clicks on. Privacy concerns are seemingly worse for non-subscribed users, the complaint alleged. Their initial prompts are shared with "a URL through which the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google." Disturbingly, the lawsuit alleged, chats are also shared with personally identifiable information (PII), even when users who want to stay anonymous opt to use Perplexity's "Incognito Mode." That mode, the lawsuit charged, is a "sham."
"'Incognito' mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google," the complaint said. "Even paid users who turned on the 'Incognito' feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them." "Perplexity's failure to inform its users that their personal information has been disclosed to Meta and Google or to take any steps to halt the continued disclosure of users' information is malicious, oppressive, and in reckless disregard" of users' rights, the lawsuit alleged.
"Nothing on Perplexity's website warns users that their conversations with its AI Machine will be shared with Meta and Google," Doe alleged. "Much less does Perplexity warn subscribed users that its 'Incognito Mode' does not function to protect users' private conversations from disclosure to companies like Meta and Google."
Malicious, oppressive, and in reckless (Score:4, Insightful)
This data is used to negotiate your next salary (Score:3, Informative)
Gullibility (Score:4, Insightful)
More generally, if you're talking to a robot that runs on someone else's machine, you should not be surprised if the machine owner spies on you. Maybe it shouldn't work this way - I'd say it definitely shouldn't, and the big outfits acknowledge this by pretending it doesn't - but that's the world we live in.
The assumption should always be that these robots are front ends to Zuckerberg's & Google's user profiling systems. Your robot talk therapist or cofounder is trying to help Nestle and Ford manipulate you. And let's not forget LEOs and intelligence - we haven't heard much about how they're targeting this stuff yet. But they would be incompetent if they aren't.
Lawsuits on Terms and Conditions (Score:3)
There's plenty of misunderstanding of what Private/Incognito modes do in basically any browser, usually leading to be big disclaimer's on opening a "Incognito" window. The names imply more to a non-technical person than what they offer and information going over to a third-party is probably fair game to get scooped up. And the general adage anytime there's a free service, likely you are the product.
The lawsuit is then just on if there's enough CYA on terms and conditions rather than privacy tech, but the headlines will imply otherwise.
Interestingly some of the other points they are litigating are a little dubious. Like Do Not Track headers counterproductively can be used for browser fingerprinting and tracking [eff.org]. The Privacy Policy is one click away from the front page on the sign in screen and incognito mode is only after sign. And if you sign in with Google, get even an additional warning about privacy policies.
probably all public facing AI (Score:4, Informative)