Claude Users Found Their Private Chats Online – What Does This Say About AI And Privacy?

Last year, ChatGPT users found that chats they had shared could be found through Google search. Many people believed they were sending a link to a small group of people, but the pages ended up being indexed and searchable online. OpenAI later removed the sharing option after complaints that users did not fully understand where those chats could end up.

And now, Claude users have found themselves in a very familiar situation…

Posts on Reddit and an investigation from Futurism found that Google search results listed shared Claude chats, with personal information, company documents and other material that many people would never expect to find through a search engine. The latest case has restarted questions about AI privacy and whether people fully understand what happens after clicking the Share button.

How Did Claude Chats End Up On Google?

People starting learning about it after Reddit users found that searching a certain link on Google returned a long list of shared Claude chats.

One Reddit user posted a screenshot of the results and said, “Simple google dork request lets you find a LOT of them. I’ve already found some college student going insane.”

The thread was flooded with hundreds of comments. Many users believed Anthropic should have stopped search engines from indexing shared chats. One view repeated throughout the thread was that “Share with a link” should not mean a page can be found through Google.

Futurism reviewed many of the indexed pages and reported that they had what looked like a detailed medical report for a real patient, clinical trial results with patient names, documents listing the names and phone numbers of primary school children, company files marked for internal use only and employee reviews with personal information. The publication chose not to publish links because of privacy concerns.

Not every indexed page held sensitive information and Futurism found public websites and apps made through Claude Artifacts that were intended for anyone to use. Even so, many searchable chats looked as though they had only been shared between work colleagues or small groups.
 

What Did Anthropic Say?

Anthropic said the system was working as intended and that users decide when content becomes public, saying, “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. These shareable links are not guessable or discoverable unless people choose to share them themselves. 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.”

Claude tells users that pressing the Share button creates a public link that anyone with that link can view. Futurism reported that this message does not mention search engines indexing those pages. Claude Artifacts uses more direct wording, telling users that published content can become visible in search engine results.

Futurism also reported that this is not the first time Anthropic has dealt with this issue. Forbes reported last year that hundreds of Claude chats had been indexed, leading Anthropic to remove those pages from search results. Futurism also said OpenAI and xAI have both dealt with similar situations after searchable AI chats were found through Google.

What Does This Say About AI Privacy?

One would think a public link is only meant for the people you send it to, but search engines see public webpages differently. If indexing is allowed, those pages can be listed in search results, which makes personal details, business information and confidential work much easier to find than users expected.

The Reddit thread also showed how searchable AI chats can become internet curiosities. Users reported finding everything from cryptocurrency wallet keys and legal questions to creative writing and unusual prompts. According to the Reddit thread, Google search results started disappearing after Anthropic began to act, but some users spotted chats on Bing and Brave Search for a short time after that.

Cases like this are a lesson for anyone using AI chatbots. Sharing personal documents with AI is a risk on its own. But, if you do – maybe, chats with personal, financial, medical or business information should rather be copied into a secure document instead of sharing that public link.