https://www.theverge.com/report/822110/opentable-ai-assisted-data-restaurants
Your online reservations are telling restaurants all about you
- OpenTable is sharing your dining habits, both good and bad.
by Dominic Preston
Nov 17, 2025, 1:59 PM EST
*** begin quote ***
Your Online Reservations Are Telling Restaurants All About You [theverge.com]
If you make reservations through OpenTable, restaurants may be getting more information about you than you realize. Because OpenTable isn’t just for customers…it’s “billed to restaurants as a one-stop shop” that can integrate with restaurants’ payment and order management systems. When you make a new reservation, OpenTable gathers information “based on the orders you’ve made and money you’ve spent at other restaurants in the past” and shows it to restaurants using AI-assisted tags. According to an OpenTable representative, “what [they] share with restaurants is guided by the choices you’ve made in your privacy preferences,” but The Verge found the platform’s privacy policy “actually a little opaque on this.”
Want to opt out of this data sharing? “You can do so by logging into your account, heading to your profile, and then going to the ‘Preferences’ page. You’ll find six options related to the privacy policy, but the one that matters most is the last one: ‘Allow OpenTable to use Point of Sale information.’ Untick that, and your order history should be your own again.”
*** end quote ***
Surprise, surprise. And, you thought OpenTable was wearing a “white hat”! Argh!
I remember a Law & Order episode where a Mafia informant was killed when a special cake was delivered to a fancy restaurant in lower Manhattan. (The Shearson data center was near by and I was familiar with it and the area.). So is OpenTable a security risk. Maybe is your looking over your shoulder for a hitman, process server, or a jealous ex-lover.
More common reason would be that your treatment at a restaurant may be related to your spending habits (i.e., big spender gets special treatment; poor tipper gets spit in their food). YMMV!
And like most tracking done by your phone, it may subject you to unexpected intrusions.
Consult the Electronic Freedom Foundation for more horror stories.
— 30 —
Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 