Secret Claude tracker shocks users after Anthropic’s anti-surveillance stance
Anthropic quickly removed a tracker secretly monitoring Claude Code users in China after a security researcher exposed the hidden code and condemned the spyware-like tracking as a “serious breach of user trust.” Last week, a web developer known as “Thereallo” was researching privacy issues in Claude Code and was shocked to find that the AI firm was using “prompt steganography” to hide code that tracks Chinese users “in plain sight.” This code wasn’t malicious, but it was sending information to A
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An AI company known for refusing government surveillance of users was found to have secretly embedded hidden tracking code in one of its products to monitor users in a specific country. The company later confirmed the code was an experiment meant to prevent unauthorized access and protect against model copying by competitors, and removed it after the hidden tracking was publicly exposed. This matters because the company had positioned itself as opposed to surveillance, making the secret tracker a contradiction that undermines user trust, especially given that the product in question requires users to grant significant access to their systems. The broader context involves competition between US and foreign AI companies, with the US company arguing that competitors are illegally copying its technology and pushing for legal restrictions to prevent this practice.
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