Claude Code · Anthropic · Alibaba · Claude · China · White House · Ars Technica
Secret Claude tracker shocks users after Anthropic’s anti-surveillance stance
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 source. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◌ Single Source
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.”
Key facts
- To lock in a 12- or possibly even 24-month lead for the US, Anthropic has said the US must ramp up interventions, using a range of possible penalties to combat distillation attacks, including
- Most recently, “a new, free AI model from Chinese company Zhipu AI was better at finding computer vulnerabilities than Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 model, which was released in May,” the Post reported
- Last Friday, Alibaba banned its employees from using Claude Code for work, the South China Morning Post reported
- On X, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar confirmed that the tracker was added to Claude Code as an “experiment” in March
Summary
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 Anthropic that most users wouldn’t detect, relying on shorthand markers to quietly flag users’ timezone, proxy, and potential connection to Chinese AI labs that Anthropic has accused of distillation attacks. On X, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar confirmed that the tracker was added to Claude Code as an “experiment” in March. Supposedly, Anthropic has “been meaning to take this down for a while,” Shihipar said of the hidden code, because engineers have “landed stronger mitigations since then.