A bunch of links in an unlisted share directory were indexed and crawled by Google. A Reddit user found them via Google Dorking, and discovered private conversations they shouldn’t have had access to. It’s not clear how Google discovered these links. To prevent this, Anthropic should have added a “no index” flag to this directory, which they have fixed now.
The searches showed Claude chats for which a user had decided to “share” a link had been saved by search engines like Google, leaving them accessible to the broader public.
So… people created public links, shared them to the public, and got surprised they were public?
The share option within Claude tells a user that “anyone with the link” may view the contents of that link, but does not explicitly state that the link may end up in Google and search results.
Google Docs has a “anyone with a link” sharing option. I would not expect setting that and texting my friend the link to result in the document contents being indexed for searches.
I have to admit I was wrong - a shit-load of google docs are also visible on search. I wasn’t aware it works this way. That’s really bad. I found so many people’s resumes!
No, this is basic internet stuff, all of those generated links must be in some public forum/site, that google can crawl. Google doesn’t randomly start guessing URL, there must be public link path in some site for Google to find.
If you generate link in any app, and share it on public site, it will be indexed by bots.
That’s not how Google’s crawlers or search indexing work. If you configure your site properly, you won’t have this problem Anthropic’s had. This is an amateur move by Anthropic
That’s a bit misleading.
A bunch of links in an unlisted share directory were indexed and crawled by Google. A Reddit user found them via Google Dorking, and discovered private conversations they shouldn’t have had access to. It’s not clear how Google discovered these links. To prevent this, Anthropic should have added a “no index” flag to this directory, which they have fixed now.
lol. Weird article yeah.
So… people created public links, shared them to the public, and got surprised they were public?
LOL. Yeah!
I would not assume “anyone with a link” includes people who do not have the link.
If you post it on the Internet, everyone has it. Especially companies like Google who scrape the entire Internet.
Does it say they posted it on the Internet?
Google Docs has a “anyone with a link” sharing option. I would not expect setting that and texting my friend the link to result in the document contents being indexed for searches.
Does it need to? That’s how Google works.
I have to admit I was wrong - a shit-load of google docs are also visible on search. I wasn’t aware it works this way. That’s really bad. I found so many people’s resumes!
That’s actually not how Google works. This was Anthropics screwup
No, this is basic internet stuff, all of those generated links must be in some public forum/site, that google can crawl. Google doesn’t randomly start guessing URL, there must be public link path in some site for Google to find.
If you generate link in any app, and share it on public site, it will be indexed by bots.
That’s not how Google’s crawlers or search indexing work. If you configure your site properly, you won’t have this problem Anthropic’s had. This is an amateur move by Anthropic