It has been revealed that chats created by Claude users and accessible through shareable contacts are being indexed in Google search results. This situation, noticed by Reddit users, has caused many personal and professional chats to become accessible through search engines.

Anthropic stated that they do not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines, emphasizing that this situation does not originate from their systems. The company stated that shared contacts are not predictable and only become discoverable if users share these contacts on public platforms.

The indexing process of chats and the companies’ statements

In a statement from Google, it was stated that search engines do not check whether web pages are publicly accessible. Google officials argued that the indexed pages were discovered not by search engines, but as a result of users sharing these contacts on social media or forums.

It has been reported that the search results in question contain personal information, cryptocurrency wallet information, and sensitive correspondence. ZDNet’s investigations also observed that some chats with potential legal or financial consequences were reflected in the search results.

Anthropic and Google remind site owners that they can use tools like the noindex tag to prevent such situations. Following the issue being raised on Reddit, it was reported that a large portion of the related links were removed from the search results.

How can users control their shared chats?

On the Claude platform, chats are kept private by default and only become accessible externally when a user creates a shared link. This does not affect private chats that have not previously been linked.

Users can control their previously shared chat links by going to the Settings menu and visiting the Privacy and Shared Chats section. All active sharing relationships can be disabled via the Manage option in this section.

Do you regularly check the chat contacts you have created previously?