If you’ve used Claude, the popular AI chatbot from Anthropic, you’ll want to read this. Over the weekend, Reddit users discovered that private shared conversations were showing up in Google and Bing search results. The issue came from a coding mistake that let search engines index chat URLs without actually crawling the content first. That means anyone searching“site:claude.ai/share”could find chats containing medical information, corporate data, and other sensitive material.
Anthropic fixed the problem by Monday, July 27, but the company’s own spokesperson warns that anyone who already had a share link could still access the content. SEO expert Glenn Gabe explained that blocking search engines from crawling a page doesn’t always stop them from listing it. And even after the fix, third-party sites may have already archived copies of those chats.
So what should you do? If you have a Claude account, go to Settings, then Privacy, then Shared Chats, and delete anything you’ve shared in the past. It’s also a good idea to think twice before putting personal details into any AI tool. Have you ever shared something with an AI chatbot that you’d regret if it went public? Let us know in the comments.
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Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
