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In the constantly worsening privacy landscape of 2026, “You are what you read” is, unfortunately, no longer a motivational quote to read better. USA Today Co. recently announced a partnership with Palantir,[1] meaning your reading patterns may no longer remain anonymous.
Your reading habits could now be used to build a profile on you. Every healthcare topic you quietly researched, every article you looked up while you were in financial trouble, or every piece of immigration-related information you searched for on the internet could be used against you through targeted advertising or phishing attacks.
The most worrisome part is that all of this information could live with the same company that aids ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in tracking deportation targets.
Here’s everything you need to know about the USA Today-Palantir partnership and what it could mean for your privacy.
As reported by NiemanLab, USA Today Co., which owns 200+ newspapers in the United States along with the USA Today daily, has struck a partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palantir to monetize reader relationships.
As of now, when you visit a USA Today site, it’s most probably an “anonymous interaction” — the company doesn’t know who you are beyond what basic web analytics can provide.
However, Palantir’s software is expected to help the publication stitch together these scattered anonymous visits, turning readers into trackable and identified individual profiles.
According to Mike Reed, USA Today CEO, this would lead to “smarter subscription and advertising experiences”, which are actually based on what readers engage with.
“Every visit, every session, and every moment of attention creates a signal. When we connect those signals, they become actionable intelligence that allows us to engage users more effectively and monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value,” said Mike Reed.
This move comes amidst USA Today’s dwindling search traffic. As per its Q2 earnings report, the number of unique visitors to its websites fell to 158 million in the second quarter, compared to 180 million in the first quarter.
This is not because of a change in demand patterns, but because people are discovering content differently than they used to before. For instance, many readers now refer to AI search summaries on Google instead of clicking on links.
This partnership aims to bring back some of that lost reach by extracting more value from the readers that USA Today still has.
A single click on a news article might mean nothing, but several clicks over weeks or months can reveal behavioral patterns, political beliefs, and other individual traits.
Such data can in fact be more invasive than a breach of personally identifiable information such as a name, email address, or Social Security number.
Palantir’s association with ICE, the Department of Defense, and the Israeli military also raises a lot of privacy concerns. USA Today has said that “all of our data remains our data.”
However, this is just a claim about data ownership and doesn’t specify whether Palantir never touches or processes the data. In fact, the entire purpose of this partnership is to analyze readers’ data using the “incredible AI and software that Palantir has.”
This raises questions about what ownership really means once a third party’s infrastructure is processing personal information.
For example, if a reader regularly reads about immigration-related articles, visa issues, and permanent residency, those details could reside in a Palantir-built system. It’s then not far-fetched to consider that this data could still be requested, subpoenaed, or breached in a way that anonymous traffic could never have been.
Plus, if we learned anything from Flock’s AI cameras being used for government surveillance, there’s solid evidence ICE will go to any extent to enforce immigration.
Moreover, a breach of this kind of data could be more dangerous than a typical data breach. Scammers could get their hands on specific reader habits, allowing them to target you with convincing phishing scams.
For instance, a person in financial despair may be targeted with fake loan or credit card messages designed to facilitate financial fraud.
800 of USA Today’s own employees have stood up against this partnership with Palantir. The company’s workers have alleged in an open letter that this partnership threatens to undermine trust in their news outlets, citing various ethical issues with Palantir.
The letter stresses Palantir’s association with ICE, where the company’s AI technology has been used to increase surveillance and aid in immigration crackdowns.
Additionally, journalists who have tried to cover immigration enforcement actions and protests have been assaulted and falsely arrested in the past.
“Technologists and even former employees have warned that it’s not far-fetched to imagine a future where Palantir’s A.I. technology is used to surveil American citizens and target dissidents,” the letter reads.
The letter also raises questions about how readers’ personal information and data will be used and protected, as USA Today has provided very little detail about the parameters of this agreement.
The most obvious thing to do from a digital privacy standpoint is to avoid USA Today, at least until there’s absolute clarity on what’s going on with user data.
Furthermore, if you’re worried about your browsing activity being exposed and used against you, you can use a virtual private network (VPN) to add another layer of privacy.
A VPN masks your real IP address by assigning you the IP address of its server and encrypts your traffic between your device and the VPN server, making it harder for websites and network snoopers to associate your browsing activity with your real IP address and location.
However, keep in mind that a VPN cannot prevent USA Today from identifying you through other methods, such as cookies or account logins.
Lastly, you can also consider using an identity theft protection service to be doubly sure about your data’s privacy. These services constantly monitor online databases and alert you in the event your data is found anywhere.
Reading history and patterns could be more revealing than you might imagine. It could give away your political beliefs, health issues, general life problems, interests, and financial conditions — details you never typed into a form, never consented to share, and may not have told anyone else at all.
While USA Today alleges that this partnership is only intended to drive monetization and increase user visits, the process involves building identity-linked records which might sit within the same infrastructure built by a company whose other clients are ICE, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Israeli military.
As such, consider avoiding USA Today altogether. Also, using a VPN while online is a good cybersecurity habit to adopt. Not only does it hide your IP address and add another layer of privacy, but it can also protect your data from hackers and certain man-in-the-middle attacks.
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