this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Privacy

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8 Million Users' AI Conversations Sold for Profit by "Privacy" Extensions (www.koi.ai)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by solrize@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.world
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Urban VPN is a particularly bad offender. It intercepts all your conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI bots (glad I don't use any), and sends them to the VPN vendor for resale. This is nuts.

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[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The catchphrase doesn't mean you should be wary of free software, it means you should be wary of free services.

If a service costs you no money to use, and yet costs the operator money to provide, you should think carefully about how the operator is financing it - because it may be via capture and sale of your data, or other undesirable means.

Amazing and benevolent free software does exist (and lots of it!) but there's a reason FOSS and self-hosted are often said in the same breath. Giving away software for free costs nothing (aside from the generosity of the developer's time) but hosting software as a service costs money, and that's why if a service is free you should exercise suspicion.

Also - a shoutout to our Lemmy Admins as proof that this isn't always true, and for hosting the fediverse for free out of their own pockets, simply because it's a cause they believe in.