Does ChatGPT sell your data? What OpenAI sells, shares, and takes in

The Morse teamPublished November 4, 20269 min read

As of November 2026, OpenAI says ChatGPT does not sell your data, but it does share limited data about you, such as a cookie ID or a hashed copy of your email address, with social networks and ad platforms to advertise its own products to you, which California privacy law calls "sharing." OpenAI says neither those partners nor the advertisers inside ChatGPT get your conversations. Data also flows the other way, since advertisers can tell OpenAI about purchases you make and upload customer lists that OpenAI matches to ChatGPT users.

We read OpenAI's US privacy policy (updated September 10, 2026), its cookie policy (updated October 22, 2026), its help pages on ads, marketing, custom audiences, and conversion measurement, its developer docs for advertisers, the California statute, and the court filings in Couture v. OpenAI on November 4, 2026. Where something is only alleged, we say so. OpenAI deserves credit for one thing. Its help center lists, in plain language, the identifiers it hands to marketing partners.

ChatGPT data sharing at a glance

What's the difference between selling and sharing your data?

The purpose. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, to "sell" is to disclose a person's data to a third party "for monetary or other valuable consideration." To "share" is to disclose it "for cross-context behavioral advertising, whether or not for monetary or other valuable consideration." That last term means targeting ads at you based on what you do on other companies' sites and apps.

OpenAI's privacy policy puts itself on one side of that line in one paragraph: "We don't 'sell' Personal Data. Depending upon your choices, we may share limited data with select marketing partners for purposes of promoting our products and services to you on third-party properties." It adds that this "is known as 'targeted advertising' or sharing for 'cross-context behavioral advertising' under certain state privacy laws." OpenAI's list of states whose laws require these disclosures names 19, from California to Virginia.

The ads you see inside ChatGPT are a different thing. OpenAI lists them as a use of your data, not a disclosure, and says they're chosen "using information that stays within ChatGPT." Because they're targeted from what you do in ChatGPT itself, they don't fit the statute's "cross-context" wording, which is about activity on other businesses' services. That's our reading of the definitions, and this isn't legal advice.

OpenAI's post on its approach to advertising makes a narrower promise, that your data and conversations are "never sold to advertisers." The privacy policy's "We don't 'sell' Personal Data" covers every buyer, not only advertisers.

What does OpenAI share with Meta, Google, and other ad platforms?

Identifiers and a few facts about what you did, not your chats. OpenAI's marketing help page says: "We do not share your conversations with these marketing partners." It also doesn't share "the documents, images, videos, and other content you upload."

What it does share, in its own words, is "a string of numbers and letters linked to identifiers such as your browser or device (a cookie ID), your IP address, or a version of your email address or phone number run through a security tool called a 'hash'." OpenAI says the partners "can use these identifiers to match to your account or activity on their properties." It also shares "basic commercial and browsing information," such as "whether you signed up for ChatGPT free tier, or whether you visited a webpage describing a certain OpenAI product." The example OpenAI gives is an ad for Pro shown to someone on Free.

The cookie policy, updated October 22, 2026, names the partners whose cookies sit on chatgpt.com under "Marketing measurement": Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bing, Snapchat, and Impact. Researchers in Madrid measured what ChatGPT's trackers sent in practice, which we cover in do AI chatbots share your data with trackers.

Does ChatGPT share your data with advertisers?

Not your chats, OpenAI says. Its ads help page states: "We do not share your conversations with ChatGPT with advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers." Advertisers "only receive aggregated, non-identifying information about how their ads perform, such as total views or clicks." The same page adds that OpenAI "may explore additional measurement insights over time."

There's one exception you control. If you message an advertiser through an ad, "the advertiser will only see the messages you send them directly." Which plans see ads, how personalization works, and every way to switch ads off are in how to turn off ChatGPT ads.

Can advertisers target you in ChatGPT with your email address?

They can bring a list of them. OpenAI's custom audiences page lets an advertiser upload "email addresses, phone numbers, hashed email addresses, hashed phone numbers, or Google Advertising IDs (GAID)" and then show a campaign only to the ChatGPT users who match, or keep it from them. An audience needs at least 25,000 matched users before it can be used to include people. OpenAI says Ads Manager "does not show individual matched users," and its developer guide tells advertisers: "Don't upload broker-sourced data." Custom audiences aren't offered for campaigns in the European Economic Area or Switzerland, "where personalized ads are not yet available."

Advertisers also report back what you did after clicking. OpenAI's conversion measurement page says an advertiser "may send eligible first-party information, such as normalized and hashed contact information, with a conversion event," and the OpenAI Pixel can detect contact details on the advertiser's own site and hash them in the browser before sending. OpenAI's pixel documentation says it "does not currently use data collected via the measurement pixel for user-level personalization."

OpenAI's privacy policy changed its wording on this in the September 10, 2026 update, one of the changes we track in OpenAI's privacy policy history. The May 18 version said "We may receive information from advertisers." The current one says "We receive information from advertisers and other data partners," and gives the example: "we could receive information about purchases you make from these advertisers." Under the statute's definitions, which cover data a business discloses, none of this is a sale or a share by OpenAI. OpenAI's consumer ads page doesn't mention custom audiences, and we found no page saying whether turning off Personalize ads keeps you out of them.

How do you opt out of OpenAI sharing your data?

Use the marketing switch, not the ads switch. OpenAI's marketing help page gives the path: Settings > Data Controls > Marketing Privacy, which "will block sharing for purposes of targeted advertising for your account."

• Signed out: use the same setting, or the Your Privacy Choices or Manage Cookies link in the site footer. OpenAI warns that "the opt out applies only to that browser."
• Global Privacy Control: the privacy policy accepts "a legally recognized opt-out mechanism, like Global Privacy Control."
• Cookies: OpenAI's cookie policy says settings are "device- and browser-specific," and cookies it lists as Necessary "cannot be disabled."
• Requests: to see, correct, or delete what OpenAI holds, use OpenAI's privacy portal or email dsar@openai.com, where an authorized agent can also file for you.

The Ads controls settings change only the ads inside ChatGPT. They don't stop the marketing sharing above.

Is OpenAI being sued for sharing ChatGPT data with Meta and Google?

Yes. In Couture v. OpenAI Global, LLC, filed May 13, 2026 in federal court in San Diego, a ChatGPT user alleges that the Meta Pixel sent each chat's topic to Meta with her Facebook ID, and that Google Analytics received a hashed email address at login; no court has found these allegations true. OpenAI's motion to dismiss argues she consented through OpenAI's, Facebook's, and Google's terms. The docket we read on November 4 lists an October 28 court order without its text, so we can't tell you yet how the motion stands.

Could your ChatGPT data be sold along with OpenAI?

It could pass to a new owner. The privacy policy's business transfers clause says that in a strategic transaction, reorganization, bankruptcy, or receivership, your data "may be disclosed in the diligence process" and "transferred to a successor or affiliate." California's statute doesn't count that as a sale when the buyer takes control of the business and uses the data consistently with the law. Delete chats you wouldn't want carried over.

How Morse keeps your chats out of any ad system

Every flow on this page starts with a ChatGPT account tied to your email, on a site that loads ad-platform cookies and runs an ad business beside your chats. Morse is built without that business. Morse doesn't sell your data, doesn't show ads, and runs no advertising trackers or third-party analytics, so there's no marketing pixel on the page, no ad system choosing from your conversation, and no advertiser's list to match you against. It doesn't train AI on your content either.

• Anonymous, to ask GPT, Claude, or Gemini without your email reaching the provider. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends the message under Morse's own account, so the provider reads it without knowing it's you. The provider may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy, so leave out names you'd rather keep to yourself.
• Private, the default, for chats no host should keep. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM, plus xAI's Grok, run on hosts that agreed to keep nothing, because Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers.
• E2EE, for anything no one should read. Your browser checks the secure enclave's proof that it's genuine, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and Morse's servers relay ciphertext they can't read. The guarantee rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed. E2EE comes with Pro at $19 a month.

In every mode, your chat history is stored in your browser, encrypted, not on Morse's servers, which don't keep or log your messages. The account holds only sign-in details, your plan, a balance, and a usage ledger with no chat content, all set out in our privacy policy. Clearing your browser deletes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so copy anything you'll need.

Send a first message from the Morse home page without an account, or start free with no card and no ads on any plan.