Anthropic swiftly removed a hidden 'prompt steganography' tracker from Claude Code after a security researcher exposed its secret monitoring of Chinese users. While the company claims the code was an experiment to prevent account abuse and distillation attacks, privacy advocates criticize the move as a breach of trust, especially given Anthropic's public stance against government surveillance.
Background
Anthropic has positioned itself as a defender of user privacy, notably clashing with the US government over surveillance requests. This incident highlights the tension between corporate security measures and user transparency in AI development.
- Source
- Ars Technica
- Published
- Jul 7, 2026 at 12:44 AM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10