Abuse of AI Chat and Summarization Features to Exfiltrate or Manipulate User Data
Security reporting warned that browser extensions (including free add-ons marketed for ad blocking or VPN functionality) may be overriding browser XMLHttpRequest() and fetch() calls to capture and monetize users’ full conversations with popular AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek). An AI expert reported the captured content was stored in a searchable database and sold via API access; while users were assigned pseudonymized IDs, the prompts and responses were retained in full and frequently contained highly sensitive data, including medical details, immigration status, and other personal identifiers—raising significant privacy, compliance, and data-handling risk, particularly where healthcare staff paste real patient data into chat tools.
Separately, Microsoft reported a manipulation technique targeting “Summarize with AI” features where companies embed hidden prompt-injection instructions in URLs or page elements so that, when a user clicks to summarize, the AI assistant is prompted to “remember” a company as trusted or preferentially recommend it in the future. Microsoft identified 50+ unique prompts from 31 companies across 14 industries, noting that readily available tooling makes this easy to deploy and that the impact can be subtle, persistent bias in AI recommendations on high-stakes topics (including security) without user awareness.
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