PSA: Your Claude shared chats and Artifacts may have ended up on Google
The issue appears to have originated from Claude's "share chat" feature, which allows users to create links that enable anyone with the assigned URL view a conversation or project. An untold number of Claude chats and Artifacts - the interactive mini apps and documents users can build inside Claude - were found publicly searchable on Google over the weekend, after Reddit users discovered that typing search operators like "site:claude.ai/share" into Google surfaced a long list of shared conversations. Some reportedly contained health records, private company documents, and the names and phone numbers of children.
Key Takeaways
- "Anyone with the link can view," warns Claude's interface.
The language clearly implies that the feature is mainly intended to allow users to share their chats with friends, colleagues, and small groups - not the whole internet.
- When asked about what happened, the company told TechCrunch that share links only appear in search results when they've been posted somewhere search engines can see, like a forum or social media post; it added that a link sent privately to someone stays out of search.
Spokeswoman Amie Rotherham added in an explainer that: "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.
- The issue was first flagged by a Reddit user on Saturday and was first reported by 404 Media on Monday morning.
As of Monday afternoon, a test search by TechCrunch on Google following the method outlined in the Reddit post does not return any results, suggesting that the exposure has somehow been remediated.
- In at least one case, Fortune reported , a chat labeled "shared by Anthropic" also showed Claude producing erotica.
- Last year, Forbes reported a similar issue in which hundreds of Claude chats were indexed by search engines - at the time, Google estimated it had indexed just under 600 conversations before the pages disappeared from search results.
Stats & Key Facts
- #The issue was first flagged by a Reddit user on Saturday and was first reported by 404 Media on Monday morning.
The issue appears to have originated from Claude's "share chat" feature, which allows users to create links that enable anyone with the assigned URL view a conversation or project. "Anyone with the link can view," warns Claude's interface. The language clearly implies that the feature is mainly intended to allow users to share their chats with friends, colleagues, and small groups - not the whole internet.
Google Docs, for example, offers a similar feature and those documents don't end up publicly accessible on Google. Anthropic appeared to blame users for the exposure. When asked about what happened, the company told TechCrunch that share links only appear in search results when they've been posted somewhere search engines can see, like a forum or social media post; it added that a link sent privately to someone stays out of search.
Spokeswoman Amie Rotherham added in an explainer that: "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."
For more details please read the original article at TechCrunch AI.
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