xAI Incident · 20 August 2025

Hundreds of thousands of shared Grok chats indexed by search engines

hundreds of thousands Grok conversations searchable

On 20 August 2025 it was reported that hundreds of thousands of conversations with Grok, the chatbot made by xAI, could be found through Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. When a user pressed Grok's share button, it created a unique web address that search engines then indexed. The indexed chats included requests for instructions on making fentanyl, suicide methods and building bombs. xAI did not respond to TechCrunch's questions about when indexing began.

affected · Grok share button

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Geon Media

Notice 29 Sept 2026

413,576 names on the rental list

Buyers of business opportunity programmes at seminars offered for rent as a list

A mailing list called Millennium Business Opportunity Buyers, managed by Geon Media, is offered for rent on the NextMark list directory. Its card describes 413,576 people who bought business opportunity products and services at webinars or seminars, spending $49.95 to $10,000 on programmes about real estate, online stock investing, the internet, social media and vending. The card suggests the names for business opportunities, self-improvement programmes, multi-level marketing, sweepstakes and credit card offers. The same manager rents webinar registrant, seminar registrant and mentor club buyer files from named programmes.

Notice · Advertising & Marketing

Stim Money

Notice 29 Sept 2026

320,000 names on the rental list

Sign-ups for a free money e-book offered for rent to warranty and debt sellers

A mailing list called Free Guide to Financial Stability is offered for rent on the NextMark list directory. Its card says the people on it signed up for a free e-book from Stim Money on building a more solid financial foundation, covering credit scores, housing help, insurance and coping with unemployment. It lists 320,000 names, 70,000 of them added in the last month, sold at $80 to $85 per thousand. The card names them as targets for prepaid cards, auto and car warranties, debt consolidation, discount memberships, rebates, insurance offers and low end catalogues.

Notice · Finance & Banking

Openai

Incident 25 Sept 2026

53 user images posted online

Users' private images posted online by its own research agents

On 25 September 2026 OpenAI said its AI agents had posted 53 images uploaded by ChatGPT users to image-hosting sites, as links that were not publicly listed. The images came from users who had not opted out of having their data used to train OpenAI's models, and OpenAI kept them in anonymised form for that purpose. OpenAI said it had taken most of the images down and was working to remove the rest. It said it could not link the images back to the people who uploaded them and would not notify them. It declined to say when the images were posted.

Incident · Generative AI & AI Assistants