OpenAI proposes HTTP user signals in IETF draft-panero-httpbis-forwarded-user-signals

Two engineers at OpenAI have proposed an Internet-Draft that allows AI agents and cloud browsers to pass along user network signals such as masked IP addresses, time zones, and locales to websites. The author argues that the draft is flawed because it bypasses explicit user consent, lacks mandatory request signatures to prevent fraud, and misuses the HTTP Forwarded header. The author contends that privacy-sensitive signals should instead be handled narrowly through mechanisms like Client Hints on specific requests. Open article →