The E-Commerce Trap: How ChatGPT Tracks You (msukhareva.substack.com)

OpenAI has quietly started appending UTM tracking tags (e.g., utm_source=chatgpt.com) to product links surfaced in ChatGPT’s shopping/search features and recently struck integrations with Shopify, Etsy and Stripe to enable in-chat payments. Those tiny query parameters may look harmless, but they let merchants and ad platforms tie visits, purchases and account activity back to “ChatGPT” as the referrer—enabling conversion dashboards, user segmentation, affiliate/referral payouts, persistent retargeting and even offer/price personalization. The moves turn conversational clicks into monetizable data points and create a direct revenue vector from routed traffic and intent signals, raising privacy, commercialization and behavior-manipulation concerns for users and the AI/ML community. Technically, UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters propagate through e‑commerce systems and third‑party analytics/CRMs, linking origin to identity and purchase history and feeding optimization loops that can change what a chatbot presents to maximize clicks or conversions. The author provides a practical countermeasure: strip query parameters after the “?” when copying links (or deploy device/browser filters/configs) and offers tested, cross‑platform guides to block UTMs on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. For AI practitioners and product teams, this episode underlines how seemingly minor telemetry can convert model-driven recommendations into monetizable ad placements and data flows—raising ethical, design and regulatory questions about attribution, consent and platform incentives.