AI chatbots are giving out people’s real phone numbers
AI chatbots are giving out people’s real phone numbers
Publish Date: 2026-05-13 14:09:00
Source Domain: www.technologyreview.com
AI researchers and online privacy experts have long warned of the myriad dangers generative AI poses for personal privacy. These cases give us yet another scenario to worry about: generative AI exposing people’s real phone numbers. (The Redditor did not respond to multiple requests for comment and we could not independently verify his story.)
Experts say that these privacy lapses are most likely due to the use of personally identifiable information (PII) in training data, though it’s hard to understand the exact mechanism causing real phone numbers to show up in the AI-generated responses. But no matter the reason, the result is not fun for people on the receiving end—and,even more worryingly, there appears to be little that anyone can do to stop it.
A 400% increase in AI-related privacy requests
It’s impossible to know how often people’s phone numbers are exposed by AI chatbots, but experts say they believe that it is happening far more than is reported publicly.
DeleteMe, a company that helps customers remove their personal information from the internet, says customer queries about generative AI have increased by 400%—up to a few thousand—in the last seven months. These queries “specifically reference ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini … or other generative AI tools,” says Rob Shavell, the company’s cofounder and CEO. Specifically, 55% of these concerns about generative AI reference ChatGPT, 20% reference Gemini, 15% Claude, and 10% other AI tools, Shavell says. (MIT Technology Review has a business subscription to DeleteMe.)
Shavell says customer complaints about personal information surfaced by LLMs usually take two forms. In one common situation, “a customer asks a chatbot something innocuous about themselves and gets back accurate home addresses, phone numbers, family members’ names, or employer details.” Alternatively, a customer may be confronted with and report the exposure of someone else’s personal data,…
