A friend called me on Monday. She needed a favor. Her friend Gary was rattled, and she asked if I’d talk to him. His phone had been ringing nonstop for a month. Strangers looking for a lawyer. A locksmith. A product designer. He was in the finance industry. Hadn’t changed his number. Hadn’t done a thing differently.
Turns out, Google’s AI had simply decided his number was the right answer and started handing it out to everyone who asked. Yeah, that’s bad.
This isn’t a one-off. I explained to him that MIT Technology Review reported on a similar scenario this month, and it’s happening far more than anyone knows.
Years ago, your number got posted somewhere online. A forum. A sign-up page. A community site you forgot existed. Something you were selling.
Data brokers found it, packaged it with everything else they know about you and sold it. Some sold directly to AI companies. The AI trained on it. Now when someone asks AI for your contact info, there’s a real chance it hands your number right over.
📱 It gets worse
A PhD student at the University of Washington typed her colleague’s name into Gemini, followed by “contact info.” Out came her colleague’s personal cell number, which had been buried so deep she says she never would have found it manually.
Researchers tested ChatGPT with a professor’s name. Guardrails kicked in at first. Then ChatGPT offered an “investigative-style approach” and coached them step-by-step to surface the professor’s home address, purchase price and spouse’s name.
People contacting data privacy services because AI dug up their personal information jumped 400% in seven months.
🔒 The uncomfortable truth about removal
You can submit a privacy request to Google or OpenAI. Both have forms. Google says its response depends on your jurisdiction. OpenAI says it may decline if it has a “lawful reason.” Neither has confirmed it scrubs phone numbers from training data. And we’re talking personal cell numbers here, not business lines.
One man filed a formal removal request to Google. He waited six weeks. His phone rang the entire time. Could you imagine?
The only move is getting your number off data broker sites before the next AI training scrape. Once you’re in the model, you’re in the model. But you can’t do that manually. There are hundreds of brokers, they re-list you constantly, and submitting removal requests one by one is a full-time job nobody has time for.
That’s why I use Incogni.* It contacts over 400 data brokers on your behalf, demands removal and keeps fighting because brokers re-list you the moment your back is turned. You do nothing. They do the work. They’ve submitted 2,847 removal requests on my behalf alone. If Gary had used it, his number may never have made it into that training set in the first place.
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🗣️ TEXT/POST THIS STAT: AI privacy complaints jumped 400% in seven months. Chatbots are giving out real phone numbers and home addresses, pulled from data brokers. Your move is at GetKim.com.
📩 Send this to someone who thinks their phone number is private. Use the links below.