Did Anthropic secretly monitor Chinese Claude Code users? New claims spark controversy

Anthropic is once again mired in controversy as new claims accuse the US-based artificial intelligence of embedding hidden spyware in Claude to target Chinese users.

In a recent report published by International Cyber Digest, a developer has publicly raised the concerns that Anthropic is silently flagging specific connections using spyware.

The allegation first originated on Reddit and was subsequently corroborated by a verification report hosted on GitHub. This report claims to assess the specific versions, including 2.1.193, 2.1.195, and 2.1.196 of Claude Code.

As per the report, the alleged mechanism is real, identifying it as a covert channel embedded within the system prompt that “silently encodes user environmental data into system prompts sent to Anthropic.”

Claude Code is responsible for sending info like timezone, proxy and possible AI Lab connections into the system prompt in ways Chinese users can't notice.

The recent concerning claim sparks the fears of privacy breach. If these reports prove true, these allegations suggest a prominent AI company is engaging in covert user fingerprinting, a practice described by the developer as spyware.

When it comes to broader context, China and Anthropic have always been at odds. For instance, the tech giant formally accused Alibaba-affiliated entities of carrying out a massive-scale distillation campaign in mid June.

"Distillation attacks turn hundreds of billions of dollars in American investment and [research and development] into a massive subsidy for our geopolitical competitors," said Anthropic.

The company alleged that these operators used around 25,000 fake accounts to perform 29 million exchanges, specifically to extract Claude’s capabilities for use in competing AI models.

Similarly in November 2025, the company also reported that a Chinese-sponsored group has been misusing Claude to carry out cyber-based spy activities.

Anthropic has not yet commented on these claims.