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Private conversations with chatbot Claude suddenly published online
©Aerps.com via Unsplash
Hundreds of private conversations with Anthropic’s popular AI chatbot Claude were recently accessible to anyone online. The chats, which sometimes contained personal and work-related information, suddenly appeared in Google search results when users entered a specific search query.
The problem arose because users had the option to share a link to their chat conversation. Search engines like Google indexed these links, making them accessible to the general public. Anthropic has since resolved the issue by removing the links from search results, but many conversations had already been saved and shared by that point.
A spokesperson for Anthropic emphasized that users decide for themselves if and when to share conversations. “Links cannot be recommended or found unless people share them themselves, the spokesperson said. “When someone shares a conversation, that content becomes publicly accessible and, just like other public web content, can be archived by third parties.”
Be careful with the ‘share’ feature
The share feature within Claude does warn that “anyone with the link” can view the content, but it does not explicitly state that the link may appear in search results. Users on Reddit discovered the public chats, which spanned more than 200 conversations across at least 25 pages of search results—some only a few weeks old. The conversations ranged from everyday questions to sensitive information. For example, users shared resumes with names and contact information and conducted proprietary research, including transcripts of private conversations in the healthcare sector. One user even asked Claude how he could turn into a “nine-legged fox.”
The incident is reminiscent of previous issues with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s Grok, where chat logs were also made public. Google stated that it has no control over which pages are public but that website owners can decide for themselves whether content is indexed.
©Aerps.com via Unsplash