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Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

thatprivacyguy.com

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Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#21

Post by isodev »

I don't know why this is flagged, just ran a query on my Mac and indeed, the anthropic extension was deployed for all sorts of (installed and imaginary) chromium browsers.

I've never seen or approved a prompt from Claude if I want any of this to be installed and I've never seen or approved a prompt from macOS that Claude is asking permission to mess around with other apps (though `Application Support` is probably not protected for non-sandboxed apps).

I don't think we should normalise or try to diminish the importance of good security practices. Apps that randomly rewrite how other apps your computer work are generally in the category of malware (and here we're not even considering Claude's apparently ability to execute local instructions based on random text it finds online).

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#22

Post by miguno »

Exactly, what the hell. Apart from Google Chrome (and Firefox, which isn't in the list below) I don't even have any of these other browsers installed!

  $ fd claude_browser_extension.json ~/Library
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/Vivaldi/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/Arc/User Data/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/Microsoft Edge/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/com.operasoftware.Opera/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/Chromium/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
  /Users/miguno/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
I also checked Claude Desktop > Settings > Extensions. Not a single word or mention of these aforementioned extensions for browsers. I have zero Claude Desktop extensions installed and, without reading the article, would have never guessed that these extensions for browsers were installed.

Claude Desktop repeatedly installed/updated these 7 extensions since the beginning of February on my Apple machine. Every entry in the filtered log below is for all 7 extensions:

    $ grep "Installed native host manifest" ~/Library/Logs/Claude/main.log | sed -e 's/ at \/Users\/.*//' | awk '{ print $1" "$2 }' | sort -n | uniq
    2026-02-04 18:53:21
    2026-02-04 23:33:26
    2026-02-04 23:34:20
    2026-02-04 23:34:27
    2026-03-16 09:29:18
    2026-03-17 11:52:22
    2026-03-18 22:22:22
    2026-03-19 14:49:34
    2026-03-20 09:42:03
    2026-03-20 10:10:39
    2026-04-02 22:50:26
    2026-04-02 22:57:56
    2026-04-10 19:38:38
    2026-04-10 19:40:51
    2026-04-12 18:52:36
    2026-04-12 19:10:04
    2026-04-12 20:07:21
    2026-04-15 12:19:46
    2026-04-15 12:20:16
    2026-04-15 12:29:45
    2026-04-16 22:15:47
    2026-04-16 22:24:19
    2026-04-18 10:58:13
    2026-04-18 15:06:54

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#23

Post by miguno »

ibash wrote: post #10

That’s not spyware, that’s just how native messaging is designed to work. You have to put a manifest there if you want the native messaging to work later.

With this argument you could also justify: "That's not a remote access trojan (RAT), that's just how client-server communication is designed to work."

> You have to put a manifest there if you want the native messaging to work later.

The point is that Claude Desktop didn't ask the user whether they want native messaging in the first place. Which is strange, given that users experience many "Do you grant permission to do XYZ" prompts when working with Anthropic products in other situations.

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#24

Post by DavideNL »

bpodgursky wrote: post #5

You should not install Claude Desktop or Claude Code unless you trust Anthropic. You either trust them to be a responsible custodian of your compute environment or you don't. I mean it almost doesn't matter what is installed at any given time, the agent is going to install stuff you can't realistically observe, the software will auto-update, there is simply no way you can be sure spyware won't end up on your computer…

> You either trust them to be a responsible custodian of your compute environment or you don't.

"All or nothing" thinking...: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_%28psychology%29?use...

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#25

Post by salawat »

miguno wrote: post #23
ibash wrote: post #10

That’s not spyware, that’s just how native messaging is designed to work. You have to put a manifest there if you want the native messaging to work later.

With this argument you could also justify: "That's not a remote access trojan (RAT), that's just how client-server communication is designed to work." > You have to put a manifest there if you want the native messaging to work later. The point is that Claude Desktop didn't ask the user whether they want native messaging in the first place. Which is strange, given that users experience many "Do you grant permission to…

What you're describing was a norm back in like the 90's, but disappeared in the ought's/10's when companies decided the user actually being kept abreast of what their machine was being asked to do clashed with the ethos that "the luser is clueless, and we are not; just ship the functionality, and we'll beg for forgiveness later". I fought the attitude my entire tenure as a QA engineer, but business always seemed to get their override from the execs above.

At the point we're at, I'm so ethically locked out of unregulated contexts where one can't necessarily get away with that sort of thing, I'm beginning to give up hope the Industry can be turned around at all short of everyone with a modicum of ethics making the experience of computing so damned defensively locked down, it ceases to be a legacy worth passing down as anything but a cautionary tale on the hubris of man, and the ease with which men can be lured to corrupt ends via their stomachs.

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#26

Post by unparagoned »

bpodgursky wrote: post #5

You should not install Claude Desktop or Claude Code unless you trust Anthropic. You either trust them to be a responsible custodian of your compute environment or you don't. I mean it almost doesn't matter what is installed at any given time, the agent is going to install stuff you can't realistically observe, the software will auto-update, there is simply no way you can be sure spyware won't end up on your computer…

Well someone might have had perfectly good reasons to trust them before. But after this they might have perfectly good reasons to not trust them.

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#27

Post by jimmydoe »

durzo22 wrote: post #20
jimmydoe wrote: post #9

I double Anthropic did this, as apparently people copy this manually and it's still not working : https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/14616 Of course if they actually did it, without your consent, that's really really bad.

He proves it in the article and mentions multiple times they are created in launch of Claude for desktop. Why even comment if you didn’t read

you are correct.

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#28

Post by jimmydoe »

isodev wrote: post #21

I don't know why this is flagged, just ran a query on my Mac and indeed, the anthropic extension was deployed for all sorts of (installed and imaginary) chromium browsers. I've never seen or approved a prompt from Claude if I want any of this to be installed and I've never seen or approved a prompt from macOS that Claude is asking permission to mess around with other apps (though `Application Support` is probably not…

agree this seems credible concern, and should not be flagged. @dang

Re: Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?

#29

Post by bigbugbag »

isodev wrote: post #21

I don't know why this is flagged, just ran a query on my Mac and indeed, the anthropic extension was deployed for all sorts of (installed and imaginary) chromium browsers. I've never seen or approved a prompt from Claude if I want any of this to be installed and I've never seen or approved a prompt from macOS that Claude is asking permission to mess around with other apps (though `Application Support` is probably not…

it's probably flagged because it rubs some people in the wrong direction.
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