In its goal of being a helpful assistant, ChatGPT takes the information you provide as you talk and uses it to create informed responses to your questions. This can also include information it retrieves from online sources such as news or search results.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT “Where do I find cars to buy in my area?”, it might send you a blue hyperlink to https://example.com/car_search/London, knowing that you live in London. Visiting this link could help you find the car you want, but it also transmits the information that you live in London to the car search service.
ChatGPT provides these links with the goal of helping the user, but it’s also possible for a third party to lie to it or insert malicious instructions to it. In these cases, clicking these links can transmit information you would not want transmitted to third-parties.
To keep you in control of how your data is shared, the ChatGPT app will ask you to approve certain links before they can be visited. Be cautious with who you trust with your data, and review the website that the link is going to and make sure you trust it (e.g. https://chatgpt.com, https://openai.com …).