Perplexity's "Incognito Mode" is a "sham," lawsuit says

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.”

Financial, health info allegedly shared

The “extreme” privacy complaints arose in a proposed class action filed Tuesday by an anonymous Perplexity user, John Doe.

In his complaint, he likened ad trackers to “browser-based wiretap technology” that lets Google and Meta snoop on private Perplexity chat logs.

In violation of state and federal laws, he alleged, the AI firm never disclosed to users that it secretly uses tech giants’ ad trackers. His lawsuit targets all three companies, accusing them of putting profits over users’ privacy rights by seizing sensitive data that users did not realize would be shared.