The Death of Privacy: Does AI Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?

The Death of Privacy: The very phone you are using could be the gateway to your most sensitive information being leaked, without you even realising it. The advances in artificial intelligence have led us into a world where even the data we may have never shared remains accessible. We spend a lot of time worrying about what information we reveal online. But perhaps we should be equally concerned about what can be discovered from the information we never intended to reveal. Is the age of AI quietly bringing us to the end of privacy as we know it?

The Not-So-Invisible Trail: What Your Online Activities Reveal About You

We are perpetually stuck in a cycle today where we cannot live without our phone. Checking the phone as soon as we wake up, doom-scrolling in free time, putting up our appointments, normal Google searches, all these activities are a part of our normal life.

Now think if someone is actually keeping track of your activities without your knowledge. This thought would definitely make most of us uncomfortable because it is equivalent to stalking.

Yet, we’ve willingly welcomed what could be described as a ‘known stranger’ into our lives – AI, along with the digital platforms that feed it information.

We rarely question why an application needs a particular permission or how much of our activity is being stored. But these interactions need to be scrutised. A shopping search might suggest an interest. Back to back visits to a particular location might indicate a routine of our life. Several unrelated activities, when connected, could reveal something far more personal.

This is exactly where AI begins its game. Artificial Intelligence can help convert scattered information into patterns that might seem useless to most of us, such is the development in AI currently.

We worry about strangers knowing too much about us and yet we are so nonchalant about the information we willingly offer to technology every single day?

What Does Privacy Mean in the Age of Artificial Intelligence?

The most straightforward, no-nonsense answer to this question is ‘No’. There can be no privacy in today’s techno age, no matter how hard we try to set boundaries. 

The internet changed those boundaries. Suddenly, our information was travelling through websites, applications and connected devices, often without us paying much attention to where it ended up.

But AI has introduced a problem that goes beyond the information we knowingly share.

You may be cautious to never mention your financial situation online. But, your shopping habits or even the products you regularly search for still leave enough clues for AI to gauge your income. And that is precisely the kind of connection AI can be trained to identify.

A September 2026 research review published in ‘Consumer Psychology Review’ is a must-read for those interested in AI and privacy. The review is titled ‘When the Vault Is Never Opened: AI-Enabled Inference and the Future of Consumer Privacy’, explores this concern in depth. 

The researchers examined how AI can draw sensitive conclusions from information people would consider normal and harmless. Even those cases have been examined where an individual may never have disclosed the sensitive detail at all.

What does that mean for privacy online? It simply means it is challenging to not leave even traces of information for AI to roll out its judgements. This is a challenge that seems tough to overcome at the moment.

Every Click Leaves a Clue: Understanding Your Digital Footprint

Many times while browsing normally through the internet, some ads may have popped up on your screen recommending those products that you had searched for previously. This happens too frequently during most browsing sessions.

You may have experienced this even while browsing through your social media apps. This is what we define as a digital footprint, it simply means that AI is tracking each and every movement or ‘footstep’ you take in the virtual world.

Some of this information we hand over ourselves, such as our names, email addresses or delivery details. But there’s another category we rarely think about: the information collected simply because we’re using a digital service.

Most places or junctures where data is effortlessly captured are:

• Websites and links you opened.

• Products viewed, compared or purchased.

• Videos you watched, including the viewing duration.

• Comments on social media posts and interactions such as likes, saves and shares too.

• Location information and places frequently visited.

• Device identifiers and technical details.

• Search history and online interests.

Some more insights through this case:

If you are currently at location X, but have been exploring jobs in location Y, AI could infer you are considering moving to location Y. Furthermore, if you continue searching for rented apartments simultaneously, it adds up to this inference too.

Technically, you have not announced to the world that you plan to relocate. But AI would have guessed that you might plan to.

Of course, the prediction could be wrong too.

But consider the larger implication. Several ordinary online searches can collectively suggest something about a person’s future plans, even though individually they may not give enough clues. AI has the ability to conjure up these patterns.

How AI Can Discover Things You Never Disclosed

If you are an extremely private person, you would have been careful enough not to disclose your profession, salary or address online, especially with AI chatbots. But, AI can still access those details.

It is shocking, but a reevaluation of how we communicate everyday with people around us, can help us understand how AI does it. We may just casually mention our work schedules or appointments, the places we visit, personal life insights and the things we enjoy too. To us, these are ordinary details of a normal human to human conversation. But, to an AI system capable of analysing patterns, they may offer clues about something much more personal.

Researchers have actually examined this problem.

A study worth mentioning here is ‘Beyond PII: How Users Perceive and Attempt to Mitigate Implicit LLM Inference’, published through Google Research that involved 240 participants in the United States. Participants were given the task of understanding which of their personal information AI could derive from their text.

The results disclosed a shocking gap between what the participants believed they were protecting and what their words could potentially reveal.

Participants often struggled to anticipate the personal details an AI system might deduce. Even when they deliberately rewrote their text to conceal those details, their attempts succeeded in only about 28% of the tested cases. Is this number not alarming to humanity?

When AI Knows Too Much: A Mother’s Disturbing Experience With Meta AI

In September 2026, a seemingly innocent Facebook video turned into a disturbing privacy experience for Utah mother Kalie Robins.

• After she shared a video of herself singing in a car with her daughter, Meta AI suggested identifying the child in the background.

• When Robins explored the prompt, the AI reportedly began assembling personal details about her two young daughters, including their names, birth information, photographs and interests, using information scattered across years of family social media posts.

• Shockingly, the system suggested investigating where the family lived. 

• Robins also claimed it displayed a photograph she had deleted years earlier, although it has not been established whether the image was recovered from deleted storage or obtained from another accessible source.

• Meta acknowledged that its AI-generated prompts were inappropriate, stating that the feature had missed the mark and that the issue had been fixed.

• The company maintained that the responses were based on information already accessible to the user.

This Facebook video went viral sending several users into panic and this news was also reported by several news agencies such as the New York Post.

The incident brings to light the most troubling question – Even when individual pieces of information are accessible online, should AI automatically connect them to construct detailed profiles of people, especially children?

One photograph or an old Facebook post might seem harmless. But when AI begins connecting years of family memories, personal details and online activity, the resulting picture can become far more revealing than anything the family intended to share.

From Personalisation to Manipulation: Can AI Influence Your Choices?

You open YouTube intending to watch one video. You may have definitely noticed YouTube recommending you videos and sometimes even after spending about forty minutes there, you watch even those videos that you actually never searched for.

Now think about what happened during those forty minutes. You made choices, certainly. But someone or something was also deciding which options appeared before you.

This is the part of personalisation we don’t often examine.

Recommendation systems can be genuinely useful too, for example, they can help us discover important information, products and sometimes also save us from searching through thousands of options.

But the same technology can also soft-influence our choices.

Real life cases are plenty. For example, two people might search for information about the same controversial issue. But, depending on the platform they chose and their previous activity, they will be shown different recommendations, viewpoints and sources. Over time, those differences could also influence how each of those persons understands the subject.

Neither necessarily realises how much of the information reaching them has actually been selected by an algorithm and does not pop up randomly. 

This may not mean every recommendation is an attempt to manipulate our choice, nor does it mean people have lost the ability to think independently.

But it could blur the lines between informed choices and instigated choices.

Also Read: Is Privacy Already Dead? The Dark Truth Behind Meta and Google’s Data Empire  

Are Our Smartphones Secretly Listening to Us?

You mention a particular brand of shoes to a friend and immediately an advertisement for those exact shoes appears on Instagram. This is a recurring ‘coincidence’ majority of us may have experienced. The speed of the information relay is that quick.

Coincidence? Or was your phone listening?

It’s an experience that has made countless smartphone users suspicious. And given how closely our phones accompany us throughout the day, the question is hardly surprising.

First, let’s establish something: smartphones can listen to us. Their mic is for the regular activities like phone calls, voice messages, video recordings and also voice assistants depending on the smartphone model. There are applications that do require access to the microphone if and when the necessary permissions have been granted.

But does this all point towards advertising platforms secretly recording everything we speak or discuss? That’s a different claim altogether.

As of today, there is no real evidence on this. But, this does not rule out instances of microphone misuse either just because there is no corroborative evidence. So why do we keep seeing targeted advertisements again and again?

A daily life scenario may help explain:

A simple conversation with a friend could reveal significant information about your social circles, places you visit, etc. Advertising companies can also use permitted data signals to identify your interests and connections between other users. Plus, your browsing activity, purchase history, location history, etc., can also influence what you see.

None of this proves that your phone was listening.

And perhaps that’s what makes the situation particularly interesting. Advertising systems can sometimes appear to know what we’ve discussed without needing to hear the conversation at all.

The Business of Personal Data: Who Really Controls Your Information?

Have you ever wondered why so many online services are available for free? Right from image resizing, to converting documents into pdfs, so many free services online that the list is too long.

Running a social media platform, maintaining servers and developing sophisticated technology costs a lot of money. And yet multitudes of people use these services without paying a subscription.

Of course, advertising helps make that possible. And personal information about users can make those advertisements more targeted. It is equivalent to showing an advertisement to a thousand random people versus showing it to a thousand people who have actually expressed interest in that particular product.

For an advertiser, the second group may be far more attractive.

This is one reason information about our interests, habits and online activities has become commercially valuable.

There are companies known as ‘data brokers’ whose business involves collecting, purchasing, analysing or supplying information about individuals. Depending on the company and its practices, this may include demographic details, purchasing interests, location-related information and other data gathered from different sources.

And sometimes, the consequences are far more serious than receiving an advertisement for a product you don’t need.

A particular case we must examine is the US Federal Trade Commission’s legal action against data broker Kochava.

The FTC alleged that the company sold precise geolocation information obtained from mobile devices, potentially allowing purchasers to trace people’s movements to sensitive locations, including places of worship, medical facilities and domestic violence shelters.

Information collected through everyday digital activity can become valuable to organisations with which an individual has never knowingly established a relationship. This is a trap we are stuck in.

AI adds another dimension to this market. AI can analyse and identify patterns even out of that information that may seem useless to normal words of exchange to us.

When all information about our lives becomes a commercial asset, how much control do we humans actually retain over who uses and exploits it?

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Framework: What Rights Do You Have?

What happens if you used an application and now no longer require it. You may uninstall it simply, but will your personal information still be retained by that app?

Can you actually ask the company to delete your data records from their systems? Also, would you be able to find out what kind of information it holds about you? And what happens if your details are exposed in a data breach?

These are precisely the kinds of questions India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 addresses. In November 2025, the government subsequently notified the DPDP Rules 2025, establishing a more detailed framework for how organisations must handle digital personal data of consumers.

The law provides for several important rights, subject to its conditions and exceptions:

• Access to information: Gives us the right to request certain information about how our personal data is being processed.

• Correction and erasure: We can personal data correction, completion, updating or even deletion in circumstances that are covered by the law.

• Withdrawal of consent: We can withdraw our consent wherever processing relies on consent. But this does not necessarily undo processing already lawfully carried out.

• Grievance redressal: Now, there is a system to raise complaints concerning the handling of our personal data.

• Nomination: We can nominate another person to exercise specified rights in the event of death or incapacity.

But there is an important detail that Indian readers should know.

As of October 2026, the DPDP framework is still being implemented in phases by the government and many organisational obligations are scheduled to come into force only in May 2027. So the actual effect in practical life can be felt only post May 2027 as they are not fully operational yet.

Can You Reclaim Your Digital Privacy?

This exposure might leave you wanting to abandon social media and various other applications on your smartphone. But practically, it is not possible to do away technology that has now been intrinsically woven into our day to day lives.

However, can we make ourselves less vulnerable to these perils without completely disconnecting?

Here are a few other habits that can help:

• Review privacy settings often: Reevaluating your information on social media platforms is important. Also review who can access your posts, photographs and personal details.

• Limit sharing: Every single detail need not be showcased online.

• Be selective with AI chatbots: Avoid entering any confidential information whatsoever.

• Dig out old accounts and posts: Do not leave information you shared unattended.

• Use available privacy controls: Review advertising preferences. Also check your activity history and if any data retention settings need to be modified. Delete unnecessary info where possible. 

Though none of these steps can guarantee complete privacy, it can definitely help build a shield.

What If Nothing We Do Ever Goes Unrecorded?

Every step we take in the digital world leaves a trace. This has definitely made us more conscious of our activities too. But how often do we think about the actual consequences of our everyday actions? Do we ever even think that even our seemingly harmless thoughts and actions may carry such deadly consequences that last far beyond this lifetime?

The connection between AI surveillance and the law of karma is far more striking than one might imagine.

Jagatguru Tatvdarshi Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj reveals a startling truth that much of humanity remains unaware of. Every human action, including every single thought whether virtuous or harmful, is continuously recorded by Chitragupt, an agent of Yamraj, the God of Death. When our earthly life ends, the soul faces judgment in Yamraj’s court, where Chitragupt’s account serves as evidence in determining the consequences of our karmas. Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj explains that this karmic cycle binds souls to repeated births across 84 lakh life forms.

Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj explains that human birth is such a rare opportunity granted to the soul only after wandering through 84 lakh life forms. It is a golden window to do true worship of the Supreme Creator and attain complete salvation from the perpetual cycle of birth and death. Without attaining salvation, the soul will remain bound to this karmic cycle and its future will be determined by the karmic account maintained by Yamraj (Dharmraj).

AI knows a lot about you, but how much do you actually know about the value of your precious human life? Discover the extraordinary significance of human existence through the eye-opening spiritual discourses of Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj. Visit:

• Website: www.jagatgururampalji.org
• YouTube: Sant Rampal Ji Maharaj
• Facebook: Spiritual Leader Saint Rampal Ji
• ‘X’ handle: @SaintRampalJiM

FAQs: AI and Privacy

Q1) Can artificial intelligence use my private information?

Answer: Yes, AI can use your personal details.

Q2) Is AI surveillance legal in India?

Answer: Its legality depends on how information is collected and used, the applicable laws and exceptions, including provisions of India’s DPDP framework.