Users of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot were surprised over the weekend to learn that some of their conversations may be discoverable on search engines like Google and Bing. The revelation is raising questions about how much control people actually have over what they share online.

Anthropic allows Claude users to create public links to their chat threads, which gives anyone with the link the ability to view their conversations – similar to sharing options on apps like Google Docs. But what users may not have realized was that means their Claude conversations, however sensitive or personal, could show up in public search results.

As of Tuesday morning, no Claude chats appeared in Google or Bing in searches that reportedly previously surfaced them. Still, the discovery has forced users of chatbots like Claude and other online services to confront some important questions: what does it mean to make your chats shareable? When are your personal files public for all to see? And what can you do about it?

The uproar over Claude chats showing up in search results began on Sunday, after Reddit users discovered that typing “site:claude.ai/share” on Google or Bing pulled up chat logs that included personal conversations. Once users create publicly shareable links to their chats, chat logs are public and may become discoverable on search engines. So users intending to share content with a small group of people may inadvertently share their chat with the entire internet.

This isn’t the first time chats have shown up in Google results. After a similar incident in September, Anthropic told Forbes that chats became visible via Google and Bing search because they were shared online or on social media. It also said it uses a “robots.txt” file, a set of instructions that tell search engines what they can and cannot log, to prevent the issue.

Both Google and Bing instruct developers and page owners like Anthropic to take additional measures like inserting a “noindex” HTML tag, which prevents web crawlers from surfacing pages in search results. Many of the chats that appeared in Google search results didn’t have that tag, according to Wired, which reviewed several before they were taken down. Anthropic did not respond to questions about whether they’d added the tag to shared links.

Anthropic declined to comment but previously told other publications it does not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines.

How to protect your content

Users may want to check their sharing settings on other platforms as well.

The Guardian US used a similar search query to look up Google documents that users have created public links for and found a long list of files, including many with sensitive information.

Typing in a site-specific search query for Google Drive files with the word “test” turned up several pages of Google documents ranging from exams from specific elementary and high schools to the results of lead and radon detector tests in specific locations.

Searches for documents containing the word “confidential” surfaced files with potentially sensitive or private information including a city health department confidentiality agreement. It’s unclear how long these documents have been available online, but some files date back to 2003. Google spokesperson Ross Richendrfer said these documents were discoverable because the links had been posted somewhere on the internet or social media.

Neither Google nor Anthropic warn users their files could be indexed by search engines when creating shareable links. These companies need to be clearer with their users about the implications, said Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a senior staff technologist at digital privacy advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The privacy afforded by ‘anyone with a link’-style sharing of chats and documents is fragile,” Hoffman-Andrews said. “If you share something with a friend, and they share it with a friend, and they post it to social media, suddenly it’s findable and readable by anyone on the web.”

Users should use “extreme caution” when creating shareable links or take an alternative approach like copying and pasting the text or screenshotting instead, he added.

Fortunately, you can unpublish chats or Google files you’ve previously shared.

On Claude’s desktop browser, click your profile icon on the bottom-left corner and choose “settings” from the menu. Navigate to the “privacy” tab, scroll down to the “your data” section and click “manage” public chats. From there, you can delete those public threads.

On Google Drive, you’ll have to open each individual document you’ve made public. Click the “share” button on the top right of your desktop browser window and then change your “general access” settings from “anyone with the link” to “restricted” or specified people, groups or spaces.

The visibility of both the chats and the Google documents on search engines serves as a reminder to be cautious about what information you really want to share with “anyone with the link”.

“Designing to incentivize viral sharing can also lead to users unintentionally oversharing,” said Hoffman-Andrews.