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See the full story · 2 sourcesGo to the 9to5Mac home page Switch site 9to5Toys 9to5Google Logo 9to5Google Electrek Drone DJ Logo DroneDJ Space Explored About Privacy Toggle social menu Toggle dark mode Search for: Submit Toggle search form Forums Store Podcasts Apple@Work Happy Hour 9to5Mac Daily Overtime iPhone iPhone Mac Mac MacBook Pro MacBook Air iMac Mac mini Mac Studio Mac Pro iPad iPad Pro iPad Air iPad mini iPad iPadOS Watch Apple Watch Apple Watch Ultra Apple Health Apple Watch SE Vision Vision Pro visionOS Music and TV Apple Music AirPods HomePod Apple TV Guides Reviews How Tos AAPL Apple Store Apple Arcade Apple Card Apple Silicon Apple One Apple Fitness+ CarPlay Siri HomeKit Toggle dark mode Siri Apple Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Claude Anthropic Claude chats exposed in Google searches – another endorsement of Apple's privacy approach Ben Lovejoy | Jul 28 2026 - 5:16 am PT 0 Comments We've long cautioned against disclosing sensitive personal data in AI chatbot sessions, given that most companies use these as training data, but there's now an even bigger reason.
Things got way worse over the weekend when Redditors discovered that you could access some Claude AI chats through a simple Google search …
Claude has a share option that allows you to share a chat session with a colleague, friend or family member. The chatbot generates a link you can send to one or more individuals, and Claude implictly assures you that nobody can see the chat knowing the URL.
To share a chat: Click the "Share" button in the upper right corner of your chat. Once a chat has been shared, anyone with the link can view the chat snapshot.
The problem is that Redditors discovered you don't in fact need the link to be able to view the chat. You can simply Google for it, either using specific search terms or just asking Google to show you all of the chats that have been shared in this way. BBC News reports:
Hundreds of user conversations with Anthropic's popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude were found to have been available to essentially anyone online […] Users on Reddit initially discovered, external the publicly available chats, which covered more than 200 conversations with Claude across at least 25 pages of search results – some taking place just weeks ago.
Literally all you had to do was tell google to search the directory used for shared Claude chats (site:claude.ai/share).
As you might expect, some of the chat sessions were completely unhinged, like asking why the record industry was hiding the fact that birds co-wrote most of Jay-Z's albums. But others contained extremely sensitive information, such as transcripts of private conversations; a lawyer asking if they needed to self-report a breach of conduct; and a user asking for help creating a crypto wallet, and exposing their keys in the process.
Anthropic has so far attempted to claim that this is not a problem.
When someone shares a conversation, they are making that content publicly accessible, and like other public web content, it may be archived by third-party services.
The reality, of course, is that it is very much a problem, since this is not at all what users would expect. Worse, a Wired reports suggests that the underlying cause appears to be gross incompetence.
WIRED reviewed a sample of the exposed Claude chat pages and found that they did not include the “noindex” tag that both Bing and Google say they take into consideration when deciding whether or not to index a page […] Anthropic didn’t respond to questions about why it didn’t include the “noindex” tag on the shared chat pages.
It follows yesterday's news about Claude Cowork being able to escape its sandbox on Mac and gain full access to all files.
The problem appears to have been at least partially addressed for now, with previously available search results now failing, but I would advise against using the share feature given that it relies on security by obscurity .
I'd also advise removing any past shared chats. You can do this in Settings > Privacy > Shared chats > Manage .
Apple has a three-tiered approach to privacy in Apple Intelligence and the new Siri:
The highly sophisticated PCC approach means that absolutely no data is accessible by Apple or Google, nor is it retained. Apple has designed the security architecture such that this claim can be independently verified by security researchers .
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Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He's known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!
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