As users' private chats with Claude appear on Google, Anthropic says: They are to blame

A trove of seemingly private conversations with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot appeared in Google Search results recently, sparking alarm after users discovered sensitive information including cryptocurrency wallet keys and personal details which have been exposed inadvertently. According to a report by Fortune, the issue was traced to Claude’s ‘share’ feature which enables users to generate a link to send a conversation to others. What Anthropic said on the leaked chats of users AI giant Anthropic said that the company itself did not make chats searchable, instead blaming the way users shared links. “We give people control over sharing their Claude conversations publicly, and in keeping with our privacy principles, we do not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines like Google,” a spokesperson told Fortune. The company emphasised that links are only accessible if users choose to share them, but once shared, they can be archived by third-party services.What went wrongAs per the report by Fortune, members of a Reddit discussion channel has discovered that typing some search phrases in Google pulled up a long lists of shared Claude conversations and Claude Artifacts — itself did not make chats searchable, instead blaming the way users shared links. “We give people control over sharing their Claude conversations publicly, and in keeping with our privacy principles, we do not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines like Google,” a spokesperson told Fortune. The company emphasized that links are only accessible if users choose to share them, but once shared, they can be archived by third-party services.Anthropic has since fixed the issue, removing the links from Google search, though previously shared URLs remain accessible to anyone who already has them. The incident is not unique: last year, a similar glitch exposed nearly 100,000 ChatGPT conversations, while Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot also suffered from the same vulnerability. The problem stems from how “share” features create unique URLs that can be indexed by search engines.Privacy risks aheadExperts warn that shared chatbot conversations often contain more sensitive information than shared documents, since users treat AI assistants as places to “think out loud” about work, health, or legal issues. As Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI each struggle with versions of the same mistake, the episode underscores how difficult it has been for the industry to permanently fix privacy risks tied to shared AI chats.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.