OpenAI just announced they're exploring "Sign in with ChatGPT"—a universal login system that would let users access third-party apps using their ChatGPT credentials. If this sounds familiar, it's because we've seen this playbook before: a tech giant promises convenience while quietly building the largest personal data collection infrastructure in human history. Except this time, it's being pitched by a company with one of the worst data security track records in the AI industry.
Let's be crystal clear about what OpenAI is really asking for: they want to become the central authentication hub for your entire digital life, despite having multiple undisclosed breaches, storing user conversations in plain text, and consistently demonstrating that user privacy comes second to corporate ambition.
OpenAI's data security record reads like a masterclass in how not to handle sensitive information. In early 2023, hackers breached OpenAI's internal messaging systems, accessing employee discussions about the company's latest AI technologies. The kicker? OpenAI never reported this breach to law enforcement or the public, despite employee concerns that foreign adversaries could exploit vulnerabilities to steal AI secrets.
This wasn't some minor technical glitch. According to The New York Times, the breach raised alarms among OpenAI employees about national security implications, with former technical program manager Leopold Aschenbrenner warning that the company wasn't doing enough to prevent IP theft by foreign governments. OpenAI's response? They fired him.
More recently, the ChatGPT macOS app was discovered storing user conversations in plain text in unprotected locations, completely bypassing Apple's security sandboxing. When confronted about this privacy disaster, OpenAI's spokesperson offered the corporate equivalent of "oops, our bad"—hardly the response you'd expect from a company now asking to manage your identity across the entire internet.
The security failures aren't isolated incidents—they're part of a troubling pattern. Italy's data protection agency just fined OpenAI €15 million for processing users' personal data without adequate legal basis and violating transparency obligations. The investigation concluded that OpenAI lacked proper age verification systems and failed to give users meaningful control over how their data was used to train AI algorithms.
In February 2025, a threat actor claimed to have obtained login credentials for 20 million OpenAI accounts, offering them for sale on underground forums. While OpenAI hasn't confirmed the breach, this follows a 2023 incident where over 200,000 OpenAI credentials were found being sold on the dark web as part of stealer logs.
Meanwhile, researchers discovered that OpenAI was allowing some users to see conversation titles from other users' chat histories due to a bug in an open source library. CEO Sam Altman's public mea culpa—"we feel awful about this"—doesn't inspire confidence in a company that wants to become your universal digital identity provider.
"Sign in with ChatGPT" isn't just about convenience—it's about data aggregation on an unprecedented scale. By becoming the authentication layer for third-party apps, OpenAI would gain visibility into your behavior across the entire web ecosystem. They'll know which apps you use, how often you use them, and can build comprehensive behavioral profiles that make Google's data collection look quaint by comparison.
The timing isn't coincidental. With 600 million monthly active users, ChatGPT has reached the scale where identity services become incredibly valuable. OpenAI is following the exact playbook used by Google, Apple, and Facebook: offer a convenient service that masks massive data collection operations behind user-friendly interfaces.
The developer interest form reveals OpenAI's true ambitions, targeting everyone from tiny startups with 1,000 weekly users to massive platforms with over 100 million users. They're not just building an identity service—they're constructing a digital panopticon where they can monitor user behavior across every connected application.
For marketing professionals, "Sign in with ChatGPT" represents a fundamental shift in data control that should set off every alarm bell you have. Once OpenAI becomes the identity layer for your customer interactions, they effectively become the middleman in your customer relationships.
Consider the implications: OpenAI would know which of your customers are also using your competitors' services, how engaged they are with different types of content, and could potentially use this information to compete directly with your business. They're already expanding into search, e-commerce, and other consumer services—giving them identity control is like handing over your customer database to a direct competitor.
The terms of service for "Sign in with ChatGPT" haven't been published yet, but based on OpenAI's track record, expect broad data usage rights and minimal user control. The Codex CLI implementation already shows concerning patterns: automatic API key generation, unclear data sharing policies, and integration points that are difficult for users to fully understand or control.
OpenAI is selling "Sign in with ChatGPT" as user convenience, but the real beneficiaries are OpenAI and the companies that integrate with their platform. Users get marginally easier login flows in exchange for surrendering control over their digital identity to a company with a demonstrated inability to protect sensitive information.
The security framework and data policies governing ChatGPT credentials for third-party sign-ins haven't been disclosed. Given OpenAI's history of privacy negligence, expecting robust protections is wishful thinking at best, willful ignorance at worst.
This isn't innovation—it's exploitation disguised as convenience. OpenAI is leveraging their AI popularity to build a data collection empire that would make surveillance capitalism pioneers proud. They're asking users to trust them with their digital identity while providing zero evidence they deserve that trust.
"Sign in with ChatGPT" represents a broader problem in the AI industry: companies using flashy AI capabilities to mask traditional big tech power grabs. OpenAI isn't satisfied with being an AI research company—they want to control the pipes that connect users to digital services, giving them unprecedented visibility into online behavior.
The most insidious part? They're framing this expansion as natural evolution rather than aggressive market consolidation. "Sign in with ChatGPT" isn't about making users' lives easier—it's about making OpenAI indispensable to the entire internet ecosystem while accumulating data that makes their AI models more valuable and their competitive moats deeper.
Every marketer, business owner, and privacy-conscious individual should view "Sign in with ChatGPT" with extreme skepticism. We're watching a company with a terrible security track record attempt to position itself as the internet's identity provider. The only reasonable response is to refuse to participate in this digital surveillance expansion project.
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