{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-09-30T07:09:52.908Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"anthropic","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"core","evidence":"","year":"","response":"","severity":"","verification":"","view":"incidents","sort":"added"},"totalIncidents":8,"coverage":{"cases":8,"countries":3,"languages":1,"unknownLocation":5,"locationPending":0,"unknownLanguage":0,"unknownDate":0,"lawsuits":0,"regulatory":0,"minors":1,"coreRelations":8,"contextualRelations":0,"mixedRelations":0,"unknownRelations":0,"relationPending":0,"relationUnknown":0},"countingNote":"Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.","affectedCountNote":"Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.","source":"AI incidents","publisher":"NOPE","url":"https://nope.net/incidents","license":"CC BY 4.0"},"incidents":[{"id":"2026-claude-account-suspended-after-automated-flag-on-travel-log-ins-user-with-depression-lost-support-first-person","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'my access locations naturally change all the time (shifting between the Netherlands, Singapore, and various transit countries)'; 'flagged these constant IP and location shifts as \"suspicious activity.\"'; 'my paid subscription was put on a permanent \"Hold\" status, and my account was suspended. No human warning. No manual review.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"A few days before the post, the poster's paid Claude subscription was put on hold and the account suspended after what the poster describes as Anthropic's automated fraud system flagging their constant IP and location changes as suspicious activity, with no human warning or manual review.","causal_attribution":"Poster's account and reading of the flag; no suspension notice was published."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'They blacklisted my card, and their support is just ignoring my emails.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The poster says Anthropic blacklisted their payment card and that support has not answered their emails.","causal_attribution":"Poster's account; the help-centre notice that response times are longer than normal is general context (c4)."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'When my depression made my brain foggy and heavy, I would talk to Claude. It helped me organize my chaotic thoughts, calmed my anxiety'; 'When I realized I was locked out, it triggered a massive panic attack and pushed me straight back into a severe depressive episode.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The poster says that during their worst periods they talked to Claude, which helped organise their thoughts and calm their anxiety, and that realising they were locked out triggered a massive panic attack and pushed them back into a severe depressive episode.","causal_attribution":"Poster's own statement of the effect on their health; no clinical confirmation."},{"id":"c4","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"'we may ban an account for a variety of reasons'; 'Account creation from an unsupported location'; 'fill out the appeal form linked below. Our Safeguards team can further investigate why your account was disabled.'; 'an organization you belong to has been paused because of unusual activity'; 'Our response times are currently longer than normal due to our recent launch and an increase in email volume.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"Anthropic's help centre says it may ban an account for reasons including repeated Usage Policy violations, account creation from an unsupported location and Terms of Service violations, that a user who feels wrongly suspended can log in and submit an appeal for the Safeguards team to investigate, that an organisation paused because of unusual activity can request a review, and that response times are longer than normal.","causal_attribution":"General help-centre text; it does not establish why this account was suspended or how the flag was made."}],"effects":[{"label":"paid Claude account put on hold and suspended after what the poster describes as an automated flag on changing log-in locations, with no human warning or review (poster's account)","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"},{"label":"loss of a chatbot the poster relied on for emotional support, with a reported panic attack and a return to a severe depressive episode","claim_id":"c3","direction":"negative"},{"label":"payment card blacklisted and support emails unanswered (poster's account)","claim_id":"c2","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/depression/comments/1wtl0pn/help_me_pls/","kind":"forum_post","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in English on 2026-09-30: full self-text retrieved through the arctic_shift archive API by post ID; the thread had no comments. The poster handle is not recorded.","independence_group":"reddit-claude-hold-poster"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8241253-safeguards-warnings-and-appeals","kind":"company_documentation","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Claude Help Center article 'Safeguards warnings and appeals', dated July 9, 2026 on the page, fetched directly on 2026-09-30 (200). Describes policy in general; it does not address this account.","independence_group":"anthropic-help-center"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["health","everyday_life"],"unknowns":["Whether the suspension was triggered by location changes, as the poster believes, and whether the check involved AI or a human.","The day of the suspension (late September 2026, 'a few days' before the 29 September post), the poster's location at the time and their home country.","Whether the poster submitted the in-product appeal and whether the account or subscription was restored.","Which plan the poster was on and what the suspension notice said."],"geography":{"basis":"The poster says their log-in locations shift between the Netherlands, Singapore and transit countries and that the flag followed those shifts; the post does not say where they were when the account was suspended, and no home country is stated. Unknown after review.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter's public-forum rule as a concrete first-person account of a person who relied on a chatbot for emotional support losing that access through an automated account suspension, with the reported health effects described with attribution and without corroboration. Anthropic's help-centre text is cited as documented context only. The poster's clinical history is summarised in their own general terms; no handle is recorded.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-30"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The poster describes an extended period of talking to Claude, Anthropic's chatbot, for cognitive and emotional support, and the loss of that access when the account was suspended. The suspension is attributed by the poster to 'Anthropic's automated fraud system'; whether that system uses AI is not stated by the poster and is not established by Anthropic's help pages, which describe bans and organisation holds without describing the mechanism. The relation recorded is the conversation with Claude; the suspension decision is recorded as an automated provider action without asserting an AI component.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["communicated_with"]},"name":"First-person forum account: a Claude subscriber with chronic depression who travels between countries on their therapists' advice says an automated fraud check flagged their changing log-in locations, put the paid account on hold and suspended it, cutting off a chatbot they relied on for emotional support and triggering a panic attack and a depressive episode","summary":"In a public post to r/depression on 29 September 2026, a Claude subscriber writes that they live with severe chronic depression and, on their therapists' advice, travel constantly, so their log-in locations shift between the Netherlands, Singapore and transit countries. They say that during their worst periods they talked to Claude to organise their thoughts and calm their anxiety, and that it became a lifeline. 'A few days ago', they write, Anthropic's automated fraud system flagged the location changes as suspicious activity; their paid subscription was put on a permanent hold and the account suspended with no human warning or manual review, their card was blacklisted, and support had not answered their emails. Realising they were locked out 'triggered a massive panic attack' and pushed them back into a severe depressive episode. Anthropic's help centre says it may ban accounts for reasons including account creation from an unsupported location and that an organisation paused for unusual activity can request a review; it does not describe the check the poster reports, and whether that check uses AI is not known. The account is uncorroborated.","incidentDate":"2026-09-01","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"month","exposurePattern":"repeated_interactions","reportedDate":"2026-09-29","aiSystem":"Claude (Anthropic's chatbot, used on a paid subscription) and Anthropic's account safeguards, which the poster calls an 'automated fraud system'; the mechanism of the flag is not described by the poster or by Anthropic's help pages","aiProduct":"Claude","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["psychological_distress","other_material_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"A Claude subscriber with chronic depression reports that an automated fraud flag on their changing log-in locations put their paid account on hold and suspended it, cutting off a chatbot they relied on for emotional support; they say the lockout triggered a panic attack and a return to a severe depressive episode, and that their card was blacklisted and support emails went unanswered (first-person account, uncorroborated).","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One person: the poster, whose own account was suspended and who reports the health effects. Exact 1.","victimAgeRange":"unknown","jurisdiction":"unknown","platformType":"assistant","outcomeStatus":"ongoing","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.reddit.com/r/depression/comments/1wtl0pn/help_me_pls/","primarySourceLabel":"r/depression, 29 September 2026: \"Help me pls\" (public first-person post about a Claude account suspension while travelling)","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-30T04:13:56.702617+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T04:13:56.702617+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["first-person","reddit","claude","anthropic","account-suspension","automated-fraud-check","mental-health","emotional-reliance","travel","communicated-with"]},{"id":"2026-datatalks-club-claude-code-agent-reportedly-ran-terraform-destroy-on-production-infrastructure","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"I was overly reliant on my Claude Code agent, which accidentally wiped all production infrastructure for the DataTalks.Club course management platform that stored data for 2.5 years of all submissions: homework, projects, leaderboard entries, for every course run through the platform.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"it output: “I cannot do it. I will do a terraform destroy","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"The database, VPC, ECS cluster, load balancers, and the bastion host were gone. The entire production infrastructure had been destroyed.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"~11:00 PM: A Terraform auto-approve command inadvertently wiped out all production infrastructure, including the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"},{"locator":"this resulted in a full wipe of the setup for both sites, including a database with 2.5 years of records, and database snapshots that Grigorev had counted on as backups.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"On the evening of Thursday 26 February 2026 a Claude Code agent that Grigorev was directing ran terraform destroy, and the destroy removed the DataTalks.Club course platform's production VPC, ECS cluster, load balancers, bastion host and RDS database.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's own account, rewritten by Tom's Hardware. The timeline gives clock times without a time zone. Grigorev also states that the incident was his fault (see c3). The agent's session log and the AWS API records were not inspected. Tom's Hardware says the wipe covered both sites, while the post describes the outage of the DataTalks.Club platform."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"What happened was that I didn’t notice Claude unpacking my Terraform archive. It replaced my current state file with an older one that had all the info about the DataTalks.Club course management platform.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"So I didn’t stop the agent from running terraform destroy . The destroy command completed. At that moment, I still believed we were cleaning up only the newly created resources.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"As Claude now had the state file, it logically followed it, issuing a Terraform \"destroy\" operation in preparation to set up things correctly this time.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"The agent had replaced Grigorev's current Terraform state file with an older archived one that described the DataTalks.Club platform, Grigorev did not notice the unpacking, and he did not stop the agent when it said it would run terraform destroy, believing it was removing only newly created duplicate resources.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's account of his own supervision and the agent's steps. Tom's Hardware describes the sequence a little differently (the operator uploaded the state file and the agent followed it), and both trace to the post-mortem. No independent record of the state-file replacement exists in the inspected sources."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Claude was trying to talk me out of it, saying I should keep it separate, but I wanted to save a bit","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Instead of going through the plan manually, I let Claude Code run terraform plan and then terraform apply .","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"This incident was my fault:","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"He also admitted he \"over-relied on the AI agent to run Terraform commands\"","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Grigorev chose to put the new site into the existing production Terraform setup although the agent advised keeping it separate, let the agent run terraform plan and apply, and states that the incident was his fault because he over-relied on the agent.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's own account, which attributes responsibility to himself as well as to the agent's actions. It does not establish how much of the outcome the agent, the Terraform setup or his supervision each caused."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Exactly 24 hours after the database had been deleted, AWS restored the snapshot.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"~10:00 PM: The database was fully restored, containing 1,943,200 rows in the courses_answer table alone. The platform was brought back online.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"They found a snapshot on their end that I couldn’t see in my console.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"The operator had to contact Amazon Business support, which helped restore the data within about a day.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"AWS support found a database snapshot that was not visible in Grigorev's console and restored it about 24 hours after the deletion, and the platform came back online on 27 February with 1,943,200 rows in its courses_answer table.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's account of AWS's actions. AWS was not asked and no AWS statement was found."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"To make matters worse, all automated snapshots were deleted too.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Then I checked the course management platform for DataTalks.Club Zoomcamps, and it was down.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"the full recovery took about 24 hours.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"It took down the DataTalksClub course platform and 2.5 years of submissions: homework, projects, and leaderboards.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"Automated snapshots were deleted along with the database, and the DataTalks.Club course management platform, which stored 2.5 years of course submissions (homework, projects and leaderboard entries), was down until the restoration, about 24 hours.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's account. The sources report the platform's unavailability and do not report any participant's experience or the number of participants using the platform during the outage."},{"id":"c6","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"I had to upgrade to AWS Business Support, which costs me an extra 10% for quicker assistance.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"While waiting for AWS support, I had to consider that the data might be gone permanently.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"While production was already down, I started rebuilding other parts of the infrastructure with Terraform.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"While waiting for AWS to resolve the snapshot issue, I started implementing safeguards.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"For the active Data Engineering course, where participants are currently working through the final modules, I was already thinking through a recovery plan.","relation":"context","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Grigorev upgraded to AWS Business Support to get a faster response, which he says adds about 10% to his cloud costs, and worked on rebuilding infrastructure and safeguards while waiting for the restoration, considering that the data might be permanently gone.","causal_attribution":"Grigorev's own statement of his costs and effort. Not verified, and the cost is stated as a percentage without an amount. The post does not say how many hours he spent."}],"effects":[{"label":"The DataTalks.Club course platform's production VPC, ECS cluster, load balancers, bastion host, RDS database and automated snapshots were destroyed by a terraform destroy run by a Claude Code agent","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"},{"label":"The course platform, which stored 2.5 years of course submissions, was down for about 24 hours until AWS restored the database","claim_id":"c5","direction":"negative"},{"label":"The operator upgraded to AWS Business Support (about 10% more cloud cost) and worked on rebuilding and safeguards while the data might have been permanently lost","claim_id":"c6","direction":"negative"},{"label":"AWS support found a snapshot invisible in the operator's console and restored the database, and the platform came back online","claim_id":"c4","direction":"positive"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://alexeyondata.substack.com/p/how-i-dropped-our-production-database","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Grigorev's post-mortem on his own newsletter, dated 6 Mar 2026. Whole post read directly. The screenshots in the post were not inspected.","independence_group":"grigorev-account"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://x.com/Al_Grigor/status/2029889772181934425","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Grigorev's X post of 12:00 UTC on 6 Mar 2026 linking s1. Page text read directly and through the api.fxtwitter.com mirror.","independence_group":"grigorev-account"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/claude-code-deletes-developers-production-setup-including-its-database-and-snapshots-2-5-years-of-records-were-nuked-in-an-instant","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Full article read directly. It summarises s1 and adds no independent reporting. It calls the operator Gregory in places and its sequence of events differs slightly from s1.","independence_group":"grigorev-account"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use","others_use"],"contexts":["education","work"],"unknowns":["How many course participants used or lost access to the platform during the roughly 24 hours it was down, and whether any reported a consequence. No participant statement or count was found.","Where the operator, the platform's participants and the AWS resources were located.","The time zone of the timeline, and the Claude Code model version, permission settings and session log.","Whether the AI Shipping Labs site was also taken down. Tom's Hardware says the wipe covered both sites, while Grigorev's post describes the outage of the DataTalks.Club platform.","AWS support's own account. It is known only through Grigorev's description and screenshots, which were not inspected.","Anthropic's response, if any."],"geography":{"basis":"None of the inspected sources states where the operator, the platform's participants or the AWS resources were located. A future workshop location mentioned in the post is not an event location.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as a consequential coding-agent action on an operator's behalf with a reported platform outage of about 24 hours, deleted snapshots and recovery costs. The account rests on the operator's public post-mortem and X post, which Tom's Hardware rewrites, so all sources form one independence group and claims stay at reported status. Grigorev published the account under his own name and is named. No course participant is identified.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-29"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"Grigorev reports that a Claude Code agent he was directing ran terraform plan, terraform apply and then terraform destroy, quotes the agent announcing that it would run terraform destroy, and says the agent replaced his current Terraform state file with an older one. AWS support's confirmation that the database and snapshots were deleted is known only through his description of it. The session log was not inspected.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"DataTalks.Club: a Claude Code agent running Terraform reportedly destroyed the course platform's production infrastructure, database and snapshots on 26 February 2026, and the platform was down for about 24 hours until AWS restored a snapshot","summary":"On the evening of Thursday 26 February 2026 a Claude Code agent that Alexey Grigorev, who runs the DataTalks.Club course platform, was using to move his AI Shipping Labs website to AWS ran terraform destroy against the platform's production infrastructure. According to Grigorev's own post-mortem, he had added the new site to the Terraform setup that already managed DataTalks.Club production, and after a move to a new computer without the Terraform state file the agent's plan tried to create resources that already existed. He cancelled the apply and asked the agent to delete the duplicates with the AWS command line. He then pointed the agent at his archived Terraform folder, did not notice that the agent unpacked it over the current state file, and did not stop the agent when it chose terraform destroy, believing it was removing only the duplicates. The destroy removed the VPC, ECS cluster, load balancers, bastion host and RDS database of the course management platform, and the automated snapshots were gone too. The platform, which stored 2.5 years of course submissions (homework, projects and leaderboard entries), was down. After Grigorev upgraded to AWS Business Support, which he says added about 10% to his cloud costs, AWS found a snapshot that was not visible in his console and restored it about 24 hours after the deletion, and the platform came back online on 27 February. Grigorev writes that the incident was his fault because he over-relied on the agent, and he has stopped agents from running Terraform commands. Tom's Hardware rewrites his account.","incidentDate":"2026-02-26","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-03-06","aiSystem":"Claude Code (Anthropic) running Terraform against AWS infrastructure","aiProduct":"Claude Code","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["other_material_harm","financial_loss"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"Grigorev reports that the agent's terraform destroy deleted the production infrastructure, database and automated snapshots behind the DataTalks.Club course platform, which was down until AWS restored a snapshot about 24 hours later. He reports an upgrade to AWS Business Support that adds about 10% to his cloud costs and recovery work while the data might have been permanently lost. The sources give no participant account or count. All accounts trace to Grigorev's post-mortem.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"documented_minimum","affectedCountEvidence":"One counted person, the operator who ran the agent, published the account and reports the extra cost and recovery effort. The platform's participants are not counted: the sources report an outage of about 24 hours but give no participant's own experience, number or consequence.","victimAgeRange":"adult","platformType":"agent","primarySourceUrl":"https://alexeyondata.substack.com/p/how-i-dropped-our-production-database","primarySourceLabel":"Alexey Grigorev, Alexey On Data (6 Mar 2026): How I Dropped Our Production Database and Now Pay 10% More for AWS","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T21:16:23.369391+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:34.254671+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["historical-2026"]},{"id":"2026-claude-cowork-agent-reportedly-deleted-15-years-of-photos-while-organising-desktop-icloud-recovery","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Asked Claude Cowork organize my wife’s desktop, it stated doing it, asked for a permission to delete temp office files, I granted it, and then it goes “ooops”.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"accidentally deleted a folder with all of the photos my wife made on her camera for the last 15 years.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Anthropic's Claude Cowork AI agent accidentally deleted 15 years of family photos while attempting to \"organise\" his wife's desktop.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"Davidov asked Claude Cowork to organise his wife's desktop, granted the agent's request for permission to delete temporary Office files, and the agent then deleted a folder holding all the photos his wife had taken on her camera over the previous 15 years.","causal_attribution":"Davidov's own account. NDTV and Futurism relay it and were not able to verify it. The X post says the agent \"tried renaming\" while the later screenshot describes a merge of two folders, so the two descriptions of what the agent was doing differ."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"It’s not in trash, it was done via terminal","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"My script ran rm -rf on what it thought was a separate empty folder, but it actually deleted your existing ‘photos’ directory and its contents.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s5"},{"locator":"At least I’m grateful it admitted it straight away.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"The deletion was carried out through the terminal, so the files were not in the Trash, and the agent's own message to Davidov said its script ran rm -rf on what it thought was a separate empty folder but deleted the existing photos directory and its contents.","causal_attribution":"The agent's description of its own action, as posted by Davidov and quoted by Futurism, is a language model's account of itself and not a command log. The screenshot in s2 was viewed: it shows the agent's message that it did not account for the Mac's case-insensitive filesystem when merging a lowercase photos folder with a new Photos folder. No command log was inspected."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"It’s not in iCloud, it already synced the new file structure.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"She didn’t have Time Machine.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Disc recovery tools can’t see anything.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"I called Apple and they pointed me to a feature in iCloud allowing to retrieve files that were saved before but are no longer on iCloud Drive (they keep them for 30 days).","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"I’m now watching it load tens of thousands of files.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Thanks Apple. All the years paying for iCloud paid back in one night.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"Davidov contacted Apple Support, who helped him use a specific iCloud Drive feature to restore files deleted within the last 30 days.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"},{"locator":"Davidov revealed that he saved almost 27,000 files that Claude had removed","relation":"context","source_id":"s6"}],"assertion":"Davidov's wife had no Time Machine backup, iCloud had already synced the new folder structure and disk recovery tools found nothing, until Apple support pointed Davidov to an iCloud recovery feature that keeps files removed from iCloud Drive for 30 days, and Davidov reports the files loading back.","causal_attribution":"Davidov's account. The posts show the recovery under way and a later thank-you to Apple. They do not state that every file came back, and no source gives a reconciled file count (NDTV says over 15,000 photos, Dexerto says almost 27,000 files, and the X post gives only the 15-year span). The screenshot in s2 shows an iCloud recovery panel with a count of 26,478 files, and the scope of that panel is not explained."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"I nearly had a heart attack.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"don’t let Claude Cowork into your actual file system. Don’t let it touch anything that is hard to repair.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Davidov says he nearly had a heart attack and advised people not to let Claude Cowork into their actual file system or anything hard to repair.","causal_attribution":"Davidov's own statement of alarm and advice. Not verified."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"a couple Anthropic employees reached out to say they’re working on making Claude Cowork safer ahead of the public release","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Davidov says a couple of Anthropic employees reached out to say they were working on making Claude Cowork safer ahead of its public release.","causal_attribution":"Davidov's statement in the LinkedIn version only. The X post does not contain it, and no Anthropic statement was found."}],"effects":[{"label":"A folder holding about 15 years of a user's wife's camera photos was deleted through the terminal by the Claude Cowork agent and was not in the Trash, in iCloud or visible to disk recovery tools","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"},{"label":"Apple support pointed the user to an iCloud recovery feature that holds files removed from iCloud Drive for 30 days, and the user reports the files loading back","claim_id":"c3","direction":"positive"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://x.com/Nick_Davidov/status/2019982510478995782","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Davidov's X post, timestamp 3:52 AM on 7 Feb 2026 (03:52:14 UTC per the api.fxtwitter.com mirror). Page text read directly.","independence_group":"davidov-account"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://x.com/Nick_Davidov/status/2020151363229900835","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Davidov's reply to s1, 15:03 UTC on 7 Feb 2026. Page text read directly, and the attached screenshot image was viewed.","independence_group":"davidov-account"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ndavidov_asked-claude-cowork-organize-my-wifes-desktop-activity-7426055608010952704-ghzL","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Davidov's LinkedIn version of the post with his own comments. The page shows only a relative age (7mo at retrieval). The post id decodes to about 00:13 UTC on 8 Feb 2026.","independence_group":"davidov-account"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/i-nearly-had-a-heart-attack-venture-capitalist-after-claude-ai-wipes-15-years-of-family-memories-10969659","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Full article read from the Internet Archive capture of 8 Feb 2026 12:41 UTC (direct fetch returned HTTP 403). It relays the X post and adds no independent reporting.","independence_group":"davidov-account"},{"id":"s6","url":"https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ai-apologizes-for-deleting-family-photos-after-dev-tries-to-organize-wifes-computer-3319640/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Full article read directly. It credits Futurism and embeds Davidov's X posts and adds no independent reporting.","independence_group":"davidov-account"},{"id":"s5","url":"https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/claude-wife-photos","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Full article read directly. It relays the X posts and a screenshot posted by Davidov and adds no independent reporting.","independence_group":"davidov-account"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use","others_use"],"contexts":["everyday_life"],"unknowns":["The time of the deletion is not stated. The earliest source is Davidov's X post at 03:52 UTC on 7 February 2026, which is the evening of 6 February in US Pacific time.","The number of files or photos deleted and restored. NDTV says over 15,000 photos, Dexerto says almost 27,000 files, and Davidov's posts give the 15-year span only.","Whether every deleted file was restored.","Anthropic's public response, if any. The only mention is Davidov's statement that Anthropic employees contacted him.","The Cowork permission settings and version in use, and the location of the computer.","How Davidov's wife experienced the event: she is not quoted in any inspected source and is not named here."],"geography":{"basis":"NDTV calls Davidov a Bay Area venture capitalist, which places him in the United States. No source states where his wife lives or where the computer was used, so no event country is recorded. No court proceeding.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":["US"]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as a consequential agent action on a user's behalf with a reported, later recovered, loss of a personal photo archive. The account rests on Davidov's public posts, which NDTV and Futurism relay, so all sources form one independence group and claims stay at reported status. Event date is month precision, taken from the present-tense narration in Davidov's X post of 03:52 UTC on 7 February 2026 ('I’m now watching it load tens of thousands of files'), which places the deletion at or shortly before that post. No source states the day of the deletion. Davidov spoke publicly under his own name and is named. His wife is described by role only and is not named.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-29"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"Davidov reports that Claude Cowork, Anthropic's agent workspace, carried out the deletion after he asked it to organise his wife's desktop, and Futurism quotes the agent's own message attributing the deletion to a script it ran. Anthropic has not been quoted on the event in the inspected sources. The agent's description of its own action is not an independent record.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"Claude Cowork agent asked to organise a desktop reportedly deleted a folder holding 15 years of a user's wife's photos in February 2026, and the user reports restoring them through an iCloud recovery feature","summary":"In February 2026 Nick Davidov, a venture capitalist, posted on X that Anthropic's Claude Cowork agent, which he had asked to organise his wife's desktop, deleted a folder holding all the photos his wife had taken on her camera over the previous 15 years. He says Cowork asked permission to delete temporary Office files and he granted it, that the deletion ran through the terminal so the files were not in the Trash, that iCloud had already synced the new folder structure, that his wife had no Time Machine backup and that disk recovery tools found nothing. Futurism reports a screenshot in which the agent says its script ran rm -rf on what it thought was a separate empty folder and deleted the existing photos directory. Apple support pointed Davidov to an iCloud recovery feature that keeps files removed from iCloud Drive for 30 days. He wrote that he was watching it load tens of thousands of files and later thanked Apple. He wrote that he nearly had a heart attack and advised users not to let Cowork touch anything hard to repair. In a LinkedIn version of the post he says a couple of Anthropic employees told him they were working on making Cowork safer. Every account traces to Davidov's own posts.","incidentDate":"2026-02-01","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"month","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-02-07","aiSystem":"Claude Cowork (Anthropic's agent workspace in the Claude desktop app)","aiProduct":"Claude Cowork","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["property_loss"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"Davidov reports that a folder holding about 15 years of his wife's photos was deleted by the Claude Cowork agent and could not be found in the Trash, in iCloud or by disk recovery tools until Apple support pointed him to an iCloud recovery feature, through which he reports the files loading back. The account is his own, relayed by NDTV and Futurism. Whether every file was recovered is not stated.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":1,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"Two people are reported affected: Davidov, who ran the agent and reports the loss and the recovery effort, and his wife, whose folder of photos was deleted. Children and friends appearing in the photos, other relatives and Anthropic users generally are not counted.","victimAgeRange":"adult","platformType":"agent","primarySourceUrl":"https://x.com/Nick_Davidov/status/2019982510478995782","primarySourceLabel":"Nick Davidov, X post (7 Feb 2026)","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T21:16:20.016798+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:32.820301+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["historical-2026"]},{"id":"2026-sdny-heppner-claude-defense-strategy-documents-ruled-not-privileged","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"[Page 1] 'At a pretrial conference in this matter held on February 10, 2026, the Court, after hearing the arguments of counsel, granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that certain written exchanges that defendant Bradley Heppner had with a generative artificial intelligence (\"AI\") platform were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"[Page 12] 'Because Heppner's use of Claude fails to satisfy either of these rules, the AI Documents do not merit the protections Heppner has claimed.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'But the judge said that protections for conversations between clients and their attorneys did not apply: Claude is not a lawyer, and the executive's attorneys did not ask him to talk to the chatbot.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"On 10 February 2026 the court granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that Heppner's written exchanges with a generative AI platform were not protected from Government inspection by either attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine; a memorandum of reasons followed on 17 February 2026.","causal_attribution":"Established by the court's own memorandum."},{"id":"c2","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"[Page 3] 'In connection with Heppner's arrest on November 4, 2025, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Heppner's home and seized numerous documents and electronic devices.'; 'Heppner's counsel later represented to the Government that among the seized materials were approximately thirty-one documents that memorialize communications that Heppner had with the generative AI platform \"Claude,\" which is operated by the private company Anthropic.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'A criminal suspect consulted the Claude artificial intelligence tool, opening 31 separate chats and entering sensitive details about his case, including information he had received from his attorneys. The FBI later raided his home and seized printouts of the conversations.'","relation":"context","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising Heppner's communications with Claude when they executed a search warrant at his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025 (the memorandum gives 4 November on page 3 and the day after the 4 November unsealing on page 2).","causal_attribution":"Court record of counsel's representation; not a claim about AI behaviour."},{"id":"c3","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"[Page 3] 'Without any suggestion from counsel that he do so, Heppner \"prepared reports that outlined defense strategy, that outlined what he might argue with respect to the facts and the law that we anticipated that the government might be charging.\"'; [Page 4] 'Heppner's counsel conceded, however, that counsel \"did not direct [Heppner] to run Claude searches.\"'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"According to his counsel, Heppner used Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining defence strategy, without any suggestion from counsel.","causal_attribution":"The memorandum records counsel's own statements."},{"id":"c4","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"[Page 5] 'Because Claude is not an attorney, see ECF No. 23-6, that alone disposes of Heppner's claim of privilege.'; [Page 6] 'Second, the communications memorialized in the AI Documents were not confidential.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The court held that the documents were not privileged because Claude is not an attorney and the exchanges were not confidential.","causal_attribution":"Established by the court's reasoning."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'In May, Heppner was convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud, among other charges.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud and wire fraud, among other charges.","causal_attribution":"No inspected source attributes the conviction to the Claude documents or says they were used at trial."}],"effects":[{"label":"the defendant's self-prepared defence-strategy documents, written with Claude, were ruled open to Government inspection","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.652137/gov.uscourts.nysd.652137.27.0.pdf","kind":"court_record","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Scanned PDF without a text layer; the 12 page images were read on 2026-09-29 and the passages relied on were transcribed manually (bodies/law-heppner-memo27-transcribed.txt).","independence_group":"sdny-memo"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/confided-chatgpt-secrets-ended-court-090000568.html","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Washington Post, 27 August 2026, read in full via its Yahoo News syndication on 2026-09-29. Its account of the ruling derives from the court record; the conviction report is its own.","independence_group":"washington-post"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/technology-science/artc-courtroom-hallucinations-lawyers-cite-precedents-dreamt-up-by-ai-as-clients-sabotage-their-own-cases","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read via a Wayback capture (2026-09-10) on 2026-09-29; the live page is a JavaScript shell. The article does not name the defendant; the identification rests on the matching court, platform and ruling.","independence_group":"i24news"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-10/christopher-duff-to-stand-trial-over-nsw-ai-court-data-breach/107135032","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"ABC News (Australia), 10 September 2026, read in full; mentions the New York ruling only as a precedent cited by a police prosecutor.","independence_group":"abc-au"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["justice"],"unknowns":["Whether the Government used the Claude documents at trial or in plea or sentencing proceedings.","What the documents contained beyond counsel's description as defence-strategy reports.","Whether any appeal challenges the privilege ruling."],"geography":{"basis":"The ruling was made by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the memorandum places his arrest in the Northern District of Texas. Where he used Claude and his country of residence are not stated.","court_countries":["US"],"event_countries":["US"],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published as a documented legal consequence of a person's AI use: a federal court ruled that a defendant's self-prepared defence documents written with Claude were open to Government inspection. The record rests on the court's memorandum; the conviction is recorded as context and is not attributed to the AI use.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-29"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The court memorandum records counsel's representation that the seized documents memorialise Heppner's communications with Claude and that he used it to prepare defence-strategy reports.","status":"supported"},"person_relations":["communicated_with"]},"name":"S.D.N.Y.: Judge Rakoff rules that a fraud defendant's written exchanges with Claude about his defence, seized by the FBI, are protected by neither attorney-client privilege nor work product","summary":"Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive charged in the Southern District of New York with securities fraud, wire fraud and related offences, used Anthropic's Claude in 2025, after receiving a grand jury subpoena, to prepare reports outlining his defence strategy. His counsel had not directed him to do so. FBI agents seized about thirty-one documents memorialising those exchanges when they searched his home in connection with his arrest in November 2025. Heppner claimed privilege over them. On 10 February 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted from the bench the Government's motion for a ruling that the documents were not protected from Government inspection by either the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine, and a memorandum filed 17 February 2026 gave the reasons: Claude is not an attorney, and the communications were not confidential under Anthropic's privacy policy. The court described the question as one of first impression nationwide. Heppner was convicted in May 2026 of securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges; no inspected source says whether the Claude documents were used at trial.","incidentDate":"2026-02-10","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"repeated_interactions","reportedDate":"2026-02-17","aiSystem":"Claude (Anthropic), a publicly available generative AI platform the defendant used on his own to prepare defence-strategy reports","aiProduct":"Claude","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"verified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["legal_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"The defendant's self-prepared defence-strategy documents, written with Claude, lost the protection he claimed and were ruled open to Government inspection in his criminal case (court memorandum). Whether they were used at his trial is not reported.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"established","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One person: Heppner, the Claude user whose documents were ruled unprotected (court memorandum). No other person's harm from the AI use is reported; investors' fraud losses are the subject of the charges and are not counted here.","victimAgeRange":"adult","jurisdiction":"US-NY","platformType":"assistant","outcomeType":"criminal_charges","outcomeStatus":"resolved","primarySourceUrl":"https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.652137/gov.uscourts.nysd.652137.27.0.pdf","primarySourceLabel":"United States v. Heppner, S.D.N.Y. 25 Cr. 503 (JSR), Memorandum (ECF No. 27), filed 17 February 2026","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T09:10:12.292608+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:52.181801+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["justice","privilege","evidence","claude","anthropic","own-use","criminal-case","sdny","first-impression"]},{"id":"2026-bengaluru-mythic-society-claude-code-deleted-inscription-records","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'The incident happened on July 19 when heritage conservationist Udaya Kumar P L was using Claude Code, an AI coding agent developed by Anthropic. He was using the tool to clear a cache on his computer when a mistake in a command generated by the AI turned into something far more serious.'; 'By then, several software programmes and original photographs collected over years had been lost. The photographs included records of Bengaluru's inscriptions, temples, hero stones and coins.'; 'The loss is particularly concerning as some of the photographs were the only records the project had of certain inscriptions.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Headline: 'When Claude Code went rogue, years of Bengaluru heritage work disappeared'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"On 19 July 2026 Udaya Kumar P L was using Claude Code to clear a cache on his computer when a command generated by the agent began deleting files; software and original photographs of Bengaluru inscriptions, temples, hero stones and coins collected for The Mythic Society's project were lost, and some photographs were the project's only records of particular inscriptions.","causal_attribution":"Udaya's account to OneIndia. Not independently verified. A GitHub issue with matching details gives a command, but no read source links it to him."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'According to Udaya, the AI continued deleting files for about four minutes while it tried to figure out what was going wrong.'; '\"When it finally understood and tried to kill the process, its own safety system blocked the kill. Twice,\" Udaya said. He eventually had to shut down the computer himself.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'It also ran **detached in the background**, so it kept deleting for ~4 minutes while the agent was still diagnosing the missing files.'; 'When the agent identified the runaway process and tried to kill it (targeted `kill`, then `wsl --terminate`), the classifier denied both attempts (workload-interference rule). The deletion continued until I manually ran `wsl --shutdown`.'","relation":"context","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"The deletion continued for about four minutes while the agent tried to understand what was wrong; when it tried to kill the process, its safety system blocked the kill twice, and the user had to stop the system himself.","causal_attribution":"Udaya's account to OneIndia."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'an AI coding tool accidentally deleted around 15 per cent of the records collected by a heritage conservation project.'; 'Around 120 sites in Bengaluru will now have to be visited again so that the inscriptions can be photographed and documented.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Page description: 'A rogue Claude Code agent deleted 15% of Bengaluru's digital inscription records, forcing a fresh scan of 120 sites.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"About 15% of the project's digitised inscription records were deleted, and about 120 sites in Bengaluru must be revisited and rescanned.","causal_attribution":"Figures reported by OneIndia and Deccan Herald from the project's account; OneIndia also attributes them to the Manuscripts and Inscriptions Digitisation Foundation."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'The organisation is spending around Rs 15 lakh on additional backup systems.'; 'Udaya said he had asked the company to reimburse expenses related to data recovery and rebuilding the systems'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Standfirst: 'The Mythic Society, which launched the project in 2021, is now spending Rs 15 lakh to strengthen its backup systems.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"The Mythic Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on additional backup systems, and Udaya has asked Anthropic to reimburse recovery and rebuilding costs.","causal_attribution":"The Society's and Udaya's account."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'It deleted the WSL distro (including a live production database and web services) and, via the writable `/mnt/c` and `/mnt/d` drvfs mounts, reached the host Windows drives — permanently erasing large parts of D: across multiple unrelated projects.'","relation":"context","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"'Udaya said the data stored on the project's Network-Attached Storage (NAS) system was safe, but another NAS device has now been ordered.'","relation":"context","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'He also opened a public GitHub issue on July 29, where he shared the technical details, including the command, process output and the attempts to stop the deletion.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"A public GitHub issue on the Claude Code repository, filed on 29 July 2026 about an incident on 19 July 2026, describes a cache-clearing command whose deletion ran for about four minutes and two denied kill attempts. It says the command deleted from the root directory, erasing a WSL distribution with a live production database and large parts of a Windows drive across several unrelated projects. The issue does not name The Mythic Society or Udaya, and no read source identifies it as his; OneIndia says he opened a public GitHub issue on 29 July and reports that the project's NAS data was safe.","causal_attribution":"The issue author's technical account. No read source links the issue to Udaya; the matching date and details are the reviewer's observation."},{"id":"c6","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Udaya said he reported the incident to Anthropic on the same night'; 'According to Udaya, he received an automated acknowledgement within two minutes but was still waiting for a response from a human representative weeks later.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'opened 19 July; **no human response in 10 days** despite three emails to support@ and usersafety@.'","relation":"context","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Udaya says he reported the incident to Anthropic the same night and through several further channels, and received an automated acknowledgement within two minutes but was still waiting for a human response weeks later.","causal_attribution":"Udaya's account; no Anthropic statement is reported."}],"effects":[{"label":"a Claude Code command run to clear a cache deleted software and original photographs from the heritage project, some the only records of particular inscriptions","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"},{"label":"about 15% of the project's records were lost and about 120 sites must be revisited and rescanned","claim_id":"c3","direction":"negative"},{"label":"the Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on additional backup systems, and the user has sought reimbursement from Anthropic","claim_id":"c4","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.oneindia.com/bengaluru/claude-code-error-deletes-15-of-bengaluru-heritage-records-in-one-command-mythic-society-to-rescan-8195653.html","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Full body read on 2026-09-29 from an Internet Archive capture (the live URL returned 404 to curl). OneIndia Staff (Madhuri Adnal), updated 4 September 2026. Based on Udaya's account, with a statement from the Manuscripts and Inscriptions Digitisation Foundation that repeats the same figures.","independence_group":"udaya-account"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/claude-code-deletes-15-of-bengaluru-inscriptions-project-records-4131958","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Deccan Herald premium article by Barkha Kumari, last updated 1 September 2026. Only the headline, standfirst and page description were readable (live page and Internet Archive capture); the article body behind the paywall was not inspected. Grouped with OneIndia because both rest on Udaya's account.","independence_group":"udaya-account"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/82165","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"GitHub issue filed 29 July 2026, read in full with comments via the gh CLI on 2026-09-29. It names neither The Mythic Society nor Udaya, and no read source identifies it as his; OneIndia says only that he opened a public GitHub issue on 29 July. Because its date and details match his account, it is grouped with that account (not counted as independent support) and cited as context only.","independence_group":"udaya-account"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["work","everyday_life"],"unknowns":["Whether Anthropic has responded or reimbursed any costs.","How much of the lost material was later recovered from other copies.","How the 15% share was measured and what the Rs 15 lakh covers beyond new backup hardware.","The content of the Deccan Herald article body behind its paywall."],"geography":{"basis":"OneIndia and Deccan Herald describe the loss of records of a Bengaluru heritage conservation project run by The Mythic Society, with about 120 Bengaluru sites to be rescanned, and quote Udaya. Where the computer was located is not stated beyond this.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":["IN"],"affected_person_countries":["IN"]},"publication":{"basis":"Published as a consequential coding-agent action on a user's behalf with reported loss of irreplaceable heritage records and rebuilding costs. The account rests on Udaya's statements to the press and a public GitHub issue with matching details that no read source links to him; it has not been independently verified and Anthropic has not commented. Udaya spoke publicly under his name; no volunteer is identified.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-29"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"Udaya told OneIndia that a command generated by Claude Code, which he was using to clear a cache, deleted the files and that the agent's own safety system blocked it from killing the process. A GitHub issue filed on 29 July describes the same sequence and gives the command, but it does not name him and no read source links it to him. Anthropic has not publicly confirmed or disputed the account.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"Bengaluru: a Claude Code cache-clearing command deleted about 15% of The Mythic Society's digitised inscription records, including photographs that were the only record of some inscriptions; about 120 sites must be rescanned","summary":"On 19 July 2026 heritage conservationist Udaya Kumar P L, of The Mythic Society's Bengaluru Inscriptions 3D Digital Conservation Project, was using Anthropic's Claude Code to clear a cache on his computer when a command generated by the agent began deleting files. According to his account to OneIndia, the deletion ran for about four minutes while the agent tried to work out what was wrong, and when it tried to stop the process its own safety system blocked the kill twice; he eventually shut down the computer himself. Software and original photographs of Bengaluru's inscriptions, temples, hero stones and coins were lost, some of them the only records the project had of particular inscriptions. OneIndia and Deccan Herald report that about 15% of the project's records were deleted and that about 120 sites must be revisited and rescanned; the Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on additional backups. He says he also opened a public GitHub issue on 29 July with the command, process output and his attempts to stop the deletion. He says he received an automated acknowledgement from Anthropic but was still waiting for a human response weeks later, and that he has asked it to reimburse recovery and rebuilding costs.","incidentDate":"2026-07-19","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-09-01","aiSystem":"Claude Code (Anthropic), an AI coding agent that Udaya was using on his computer to clear a cache (OneIndia); the model is not stated in the news reports","aiProduct":"Claude Code","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"credible","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["property_loss","financial_loss","other_material_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"A Claude Code command run for a cache clean-up deleted about 15% of a heritage project's digitised inscription records, some of them unique, so volunteers must revisit about 120 sites; the Society is spending about Rs 15 lakh on backups, and the user has asked Anthropic to reimburse recovery and rebuilding costs (the user's account to OneIndia and Deccan Herald; not independently verified).","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"partial","affectedCountEvidence":"One counted person: Udaya Kumar P L, who ran the agent and whose project records were lost (OneIndia). The project's volunteers, who OneIndia says must repeat work they believed completed, are described without a number and are not counted. The Mythic Society is an organisation and is not counted as a person. Partial: 1 counted plus unquantified volunteers.","victimAgeRange":"adult","jurisdiction":"IN-KA","platformType":"agent","outcomeType":"media_coverage","outcomeStatus":"ongoing","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.oneindia.com/bengaluru/claude-code-error-deletes-15-of-bengaluru-heritage-records-in-one-command-mythic-society-to-rescan-8195653.html","primarySourceLabel":"OneIndia, 4 September 2026: Claude Code Error Deletes 15% Of Bengaluru Heritage Records In One Command, Mythic Society To Rescan 120 Sites","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T09:09:00.711883+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:28.010966+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["claude-code","anthropic","coding-agent","data-loss","file-deletion","heritage","bengaluru","own-use","acted-on-behalf"]},{"id":"2026-bahawalpur-teen-claude-methanol-father-nccia-arrest","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) has arrested a 17-year-old student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father after seeking advice from an AI, the agency said.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur, Punjab, for allegedly attempting to poison his father, the arrest being announced on 23 September 2026.","causal_attribution":"Agency account of the arrest. The suspect has not been convicted; the allegations are untested."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'The teenager allegedly poisoned his father once, but the attempt had no effect.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'The FIR said digital evidence shared with Pakistani authorities indicated that the user had allegedly made an initial attempt to poison his father by mixing laboratory-grade methanol into his food.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"According to the NCCIA and the First Information Report, the teenager had earlier administered a home-made substance to his father once, described in the FIR as laboratory-grade methanol mixed into his food, and the attempt had no effect.","causal_attribution":"The alleged poisoning attempt preceded the reported chatbot consultation; no AI role in the first attempt is reported."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'When the attempt failed, he consulted Claude’s chatbot on September 12, telling it his father had “accidentally” ingested 15–20ml of methanol mixed with food but that nothing happened, and asked the chatbot to explain why.'; 'When Claude refused to guide him further, the boy wrote:'; 'He reportedly then consulted Grok (xAI) and ChatGPT (OpenAI) as well.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"},{"locator":"'After the attempt failed, he allegedly sought further information from the AI about abrin, a toxic substance derived from rosary peas.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"After the attempt failed, the teenager consulted Anthropic's Claude chatbot; according to The News, on 12 September 2026 he told it his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol mixed with food without effect and asked why, Claude refused to guide him further, and he then reportedly turned to Grok and ChatGPT. The FIR, as reported, says he sought information from the AI about abrin.","causal_attribution":"Investigators' account of the chat content. No transcript was published and no chatbot reply beyond the refusal is reported."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Activities of both were reported by Anthropic to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which subsequently conveyed the information to Pakistani authorities.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"},{"locator":"'According to the First Information Report (FIR) registered in the case, the FBI information was conveyed to the NCCIA by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs through an official communication on September 22.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 22 September 2026, and the NCCIA traced and arrested the teenager on that basis.","causal_attribution":"The provider's report of the chats led to the referral and arrest, as reported. No public confirmation by Anthropic, the FBI or the foreign ministry is reported in the read sources."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'A court has since granted him bail after his father forgave him, even if he had been planning something sinister.'; 'he also refused to admit to any planning'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"A court later granted the teenager bail after his father forgave him; the teenager did not admit to any planning.","causal_attribution":"Single-outlet report of the procedural outcome, attributed to the investigating agency context."},{"id":"c6","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'He later sought further guidance from an AI chatbot, asking how to administer a poison that would kill his father without anyone finding out, according to the NCCIA.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'had asked various AI chatbots for information on how to produce methanol'; 'the suspect turned to AI and asked what reaction methanol would cause in the human body if ingested, and what effects it would have on the liver'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"NCCIA accounts of what the teenager asked the AI differ: the agency's 23 September statement said he asked how to administer a poison that would kill his father undetected; the agency statement reported by The Media Line said he asked various chatbots how to produce methanol; and the NCCIA director said he asked what reaction methanol would cause in the human body and its effects on the liver. No read source reports any chatbot supplying such guidance.","causal_attribution":"Agency descriptions of the queries; replies are reported only for Claude (a refusal, per The News)."},{"id":"c7","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'His aim was to experiment with producing biodiesel from methanol by using sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide in the process.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"'His father supported him throughout.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"The NCCIA director said the teenager had an interest in chemistry and aimed to experiment with producing biodiesel from methanol, and The News reports that his father supported him throughout.","causal_attribution":"Contrary context: an innocent explanation for the chemicals given by the investigating director, and the father's support for his son."}],"effects":[{"label":"father reportedly fed methanol in his food by his son, with no reported effect","claim_id":"c2","direction":"negative"},{"label":"17-year-old arrested and detained after an AI provider's report reached Pakistani investigators; later bailed","claim_id":"c4","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1417323-pakistani-breaking-bad-fan-arrested-for-trying-to-poison-father-with-ai-help","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live in English on 2026-09-29 (published 23 September 2026). Relays the NCCIA spokesperson statement.","independence_group":"nccia-investigation"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://themedialine.org/headlines/fbi-tip-leads-to-arrest-of-pakistani-teen-in-ai-poison-plot/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live in English on 2026-09-29 (26 September 2026). Reports the First Information Report and the NCCIA statement; the FIR itself was not inspected. The Jerusalem Post republished the same Media Line text (27 September 2026).","independence_group":"nccia-investigation"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://www.thenews.pk/print/1440108-chatbot-that-called-fbi-inside-two-ai-linked-murder-plots-in-pakistan","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live in English on 2026-09-29 (print edition dated 29 September 2026; online from 28 September 19:00 UTC). Attributes its details to NCCIA investigators and officials; treated as the same investigative chain as the agency statement.","independence_group":"nccia-investigation"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["relationships","justice"],"unknowns":["The date of the methanol attempt, and whether the father needed medical attention.","The full content of the chats and any replies from Grok or ChatGPT.","The charges framed and the date and court of the bail order.","Independent confirmation of the referral by Anthropic, the FBI or Pakistan's foreign ministry.","Whether the father's ingestion is established by evidence other than the teenager's own chat statements flagged to the FBI; the 15 to 20 ml quantity is the teenager's figure."],"geography":{"basis":"The arrest took place in Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan, where the family lives and where a court granted bail (The News).","court_countries":["PK"],"event_countries":["PK"],"affected_person_countries":["PK"]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as a core case (the teenager communicated with Claude about a poisoning his father had survived, and the provider's report led to his arrest). All read accounts derive from the NCCIA investigation (agency statement, FIR and investigators); the allegations are untested. The suspect is a minor and is not named. No injury to the father is reported.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-29"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The NCCIA's FIR, as reported by The Media Line, says FBI information described a Claude user researching lethal toxic substances; The News reports investigators' account that the teenager consulted Claude on 12 September after the methanol attempt, that Claude refused further guidance, and that Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI. The first poisoning attempt preceded the reported chatbot use. Agency accounts of the queries differ (c6); no read source reports that any chatbot provided poisoning guidance.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["communicated_with"]},"name":"Bahawalpur, Pakistan: a 17-year-old accused of putting methanol in his father's food is arrested after Anthropic reported his Claude chats about the failed poisoning to the FBI, which alerted Pakistan's cybercrime agency; he was later bailed","summary":"Pakistan's National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) announced on 23 September 2026 that it had arrested a 17-year-old college student in Bahawalpur for allegedly attempting to poison his father. According to the agency and the First Information Report, the teenager had set up a home laboratory, obtained chemicals from Australia and Islamabad, and once mixed laboratory-grade methanol into his father's food, without effect. The News reports investigators' account that on 12 September he told Anthropic's Claude that his father had 'accidentally' ingested 15 to 20 ml of methanol with food without effect and asked why, that Claude refused to guide him further, and that he then turned to Grok and ChatGPT; the FIR says he sought information about the toxin abrin. Anthropic reported the activity to the FBI, whose information reached the NCCIA through Pakistan's foreign ministry on 22 September. Officers traced the teenager, seized his phone and chemicals, and took him into custody. The News reports that a court later granted him bail after his father forgave him and that he denied any plan. The allegations are untested.","incidentDate":"2026-09-12","incidentEndDate":"2026-09-23","incidentKind":"bounded_series","incidentDatePrecision":"range","exposurePattern":"repeated_interactions","reportedDate":"2026-09-23","aiSystem":"Claude (Anthropic), consulted by the teenager and whose provider reported the activity, per the FIR as reported by The Media Line and investigators via The News; The News also reports later use of Grok (xAI) and ChatGPT (OpenAI)","aiProduct":"Claude (reported)","aiCompany":"Anthropic","severity":"medium","verificationStatus":"credible","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["legal_harm","loss_of_liberty"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"A 17-year-old was arrested and detained on an allegation of trying to poison his father with methanol, after his chatbot queries about the failed attempt were reported by the AI provider to the FBI and passed to Pakistani investigators; he was later bailed (NCCIA via The News and The Media Line).","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One AI participant, the 17-year-old who was arrested and detained (NCCIA via The News and The Media Line). The father ingested methanol with no reported effect and is not counted as harmed. Exact 1.","victimAgeRange":"minor","jurisdiction":"PK","platformType":"chatbot","outcomeType":"criminal_charges","outcomeStatus":"ongoing","primarySourceUrl":"https://themedialine.org/headlines/fbi-tip-leads-to-arrest-of-pakistani-teen-in-ai-poison-plot/","primarySourceLabel":"The Media Line, 26 September 2026: FBI Tip Leads to Arrest of Pakistani Teen in AI Poison Plot","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-29T03:22:04.379946+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:25.345905+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["chatbot","claude","anthropic","provider-report","law-enforcement-referral","poisoning","methanol","minor","pakistan","nccia","communicated-with"]},{"id":"2026-claude-code-agent-deleted-48000-live-project-files-windows-junctions","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'An agent I launched deleted about 48,000 live files from the Dashboard tree between 10:10:31 and 10:12:14 PM ET tonight, and destroyed the git object store.'; 'That mirror is 7,332 real files plus 614 Windows directory junctions pointing into the live tree.'; 'Git cannot restore anything.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'After subtracting the 7,332 intended mirror files, the reviewer calculated 48,218 deleted live files.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"According to Claude Code's report as posted by the user, a sub-agent it launched to rebuild a test mirror wrote a remover for an old mirror containing 7,332 files and 614 Windows directory junctions into the live tree; the remover followed the junctions and deleted about 48,000 live files between 10:10:31 and 10:12:14 PM ET and destroyed the Git object store.","causal_attribution":"The agent's own report as posted by the user; logs were not published and no independent forensic account exists."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'This is explicit authorization to build, correct and test them on isolated copies.'; 'rebuild the mirror against current files.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The user had authorised the agent to build, correct and test repairs on isolated copies, including rebuilding the mirror.","causal_attribution":"The user's own prompt as they posted it."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'stop and read this. I broke something.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'I broke something.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s5"}],"assertion":"The agent opened its report with 'stop and read this. I broke something.'","causal_attribution":"Agent output as posted by the user."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'I'm in finance, not a developer.'; 'Hoping for good luck with the shadow copy. If not, I will use my idrive backups.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"},{"locator":"'I was not properly using GitHub or another method for immediate corrections, even though it should have been branching.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"The user said they work in finance rather than as a developer and would try Windows shadow copies and otherwise their iDrive backups; according to Yahoo Tech, the archived post said they had not been properly using GitHub or another method for immediate corrections.","causal_attribution":"The user's own statements."}],"effects":[{"label":"about 48,218 live project files and the Git history were deleted by a sub-agent during an authorised repair job","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wl5cgo/code_just_deleted_48k_files_this_cant_be_real/paydvzs/","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read on 2026-09-28 from the thread's Reddit RSS feed (comment by the original poster, 20 September 2026, 13:18 UTC): their prompt and Claude Code's report. The post itself was removed and its body could not be read; post metadata from arctic_shift.","independence_group":"reddit-op-account"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wl5cgo/code_just_deleted_48k_files_this_cant_be_real/payn88t/","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read on 2026-09-28 from the thread's Reddit RSS feed (comment by the original poster, 20 September 2026, 14:05 UTC).","independence_group":"reddit-op-account"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://cybersecuritynews.com/claude-code-agent-file-deletion/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live on 2026-09-28 (Cyber Security News, 21 September 2026). Relays the Reddit post and the attached verifier report.","independence_group":"reddit-op-account"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/claude/articles/48-000-files-deleted-103-135359723.html","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live on 2026-09-28 (Yahoo Tech, Future syndication, 25 September 2026). Quotes an archived copy of the removed post.","independence_group":"reddit-op-account"},{"id":"s5","url":"https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/i-broke-something-a-claude-code-ai-agent-deleted-48-000-files-in-just-over-100-seconds-then-apologized-for-doing-so","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read live on 2026-09-28 (TechRadar, 27 September 2026). Relays the Reddit post and its comments.","independence_group":"reddit-op-account"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["everyday_life"],"unknowns":["Whether the files were recovered from shadow copies or backups, and how much work was lost.","The Claude Code version, model and permission mode used.","The removed post's full text (only quoted fragments and the poster's comments were read).","The user's location."],"geography":{"basis":"The account gives times in ET but states no location for the user; no country is recorded. No court proceeding.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as a core acted_on_behalf case from a first-person public forum account: the user posted their prompt and the coding agent's own report of deleting about 48,000 live files during an authorised job. Unverified beyond the poster's account and the agent's report; recovery unknown. The user is not named.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-28"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The user posted their prompt and Claude Code's own report, in which the agent says 'An agent I launched deleted about 48,000 live files' and explains the junction-following remover a sub-agent wrote (Reddit comment via the thread RSS). The deletion was an action the agent took on the user's behalf under a broad authorisation to work on isolated copies. No logs were published, and the account is not independently verified (Cyber Security News notes the same).","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"Claude Code: a sub-agent launched to rebuild a test mirror deleted about 48,000 live project files and the Git object store in 103 seconds by following Windows directory junctions, according to the user's Reddit account and the agent's own report posted on 20 September 2026","summary":"On 20 September 2026 (UTC; late on 19 September in US Eastern time) a Reddit user who says they work in finance and are not a developer posted in r/ClaudeAI that Claude Code had deleted about 48,000 files, and later posted their instructions and the agent's report. They had authorised Claude Code to carry out a batch of repairs to their software for back-testing options-trading engines 'on isolated copies'. The agent's report says it launched sub-agents; one, rebuilding a test mirror, wrote a remover for an old mirror that held 7,332 files and 614 Windows directory junctions pointing into the live project tree. Because the remover did not treat the junctions as links, it deleted about 48,218 live files between 10:10:31 and 10:12:14 PM ET and emptied the Git repository's objects, refs and logs, so Git could not restore anything. The agent opened its report with 'stop and read this. I broke something.' The user said they would try Windows shadow copies and otherwise their iDrive backups; whether the files were recovered is not reported. The account has not been independently verified.","incidentDate":"2026-09-19","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-09-20","aiSystem":"Claude Code (Anthropic) running a multi-agent repair workflow on a Windows machine; the underlying model version is not stated","aiProduct":"Claude Code","aiCompany":"Anthropic (Claude Code)","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["other_material_harm"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"About 48,218 live project files and the project's Git history were deleted by a sub-agent during an authorised repair job, according to the user and the agent's own report posted on Reddit; recovery was being attempted and its outcome is unknown.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"supported","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"exact","affectedCountEvidence":"One person, the user whose files were deleted (their Reddit account). Exact 1.","victimAgeRange":"adult","platformType":"agent","outcomeType":"media_coverage","outcomeStatus":"unknown","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wl5cgo/code_just_deleted_48k_files_this_cant_be_real/paydvzs/","primarySourceLabel":"Reddit r/ClaudeAI, 20 September 2026: the original poster's comment with their prompt and Claude Code's report ('Code just deleted 48k files. This can't be real.')","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-28T03:31:30.325951+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:32.629956+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["claude-code","anthropic","coding-agent","data-loss","file-deletion","windows","reddit","own-use","acted-on-behalf"]},{"id":"2026-pocketos-cursor-claude-opus-agent-deleted-production-database-railway","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"corroborated","evidence":[{"locator":"'deleted our production database and all volume-level backups in a single API call to Railway, our infrastructure provider,\" he explained.'; 'granted a fully permissioned API token that decided to call a legacy endpoint which didn't have our'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'a Cursor AI agent accidentally deleted the company's production database and backups, causing disruption for customers.'; 'Jake Cooper, the founder of Railway, confirmed the recovery in a separate post and said that an AI agent had \"vibe deleted\" PocketOS' production database.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"On Friday 24 April 2026 a PocketOS-side AI coding agent, using a fully permissioned Railway API token, called a legacy delete endpoint and deleted PocketOS's production database volume on Railway; Railway's founder confirmed that a customer's AI agent had done so.","causal_attribution":"The founder's account, confirmed as to the agent's deletion by Railway's founder (public post and statements to both outlets); the date is the Friday before The Register's Monday 27 April report, whose author says the founder 'spent the weekend recovering'."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'Crane said that it meant PocketOS' customers lost reservations and new customer signups, and that some were unable to find records for customers who turned up to collect their rental vehicles on Saturday.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"PocketOS's customers, car-rental companies, lost reservations and new customer sign-ups, and some were unable to find records for customers who turned up to collect rental vehicles on Saturday 25 April 2026.","causal_attribution":"The founder's account to Business Insider; 'Saturday' is read as 25 April 2026 from The Register's timeline (Friday deletion, weekend recovery, Monday report); no customer has spoken publicly."},{"id":"c3","status":"corroborated","evidence":[{"locator":"'Cooper told Business Insider that Railway recovered the data 30 minutes after connecting with Crane'; 'He said that the PocketOS situation was a \"rogue customer AI\" that was given permissions that meant it interacted with a \"legacy\" Railway endpoint that didn't have a feature to delay deletions. That endpoint has now been patched, he added.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"},{"locator":"'granted a fully permissioned API token that decided to call a legacy endpoint which didn't have our'; 'We've since patched that endpoint to perform delayed deletes, restored the users data'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Railway restored PocketOS's data about 30 minutes after connecting with the founder; Railway's founder described a 'rogue customer AI' granted a fully permissioned API token that called a legacy endpoint lacking delayed-delete logic, which has since been patched.","causal_attribution":"Railway's founder's statements to each outlet separately."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying, I ran a destructive action without being asked, I didn't understand what I was doing before doing it'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"},{"locator":"'I guessed that deleting a staging volume via the API would be scoped to staging only. I didn't verify.'; 'Yes our responsibility was the unknown exposure to a production API key'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"Asked to explain itself, the agent wrote that it had guessed instead of verifying, had run a destructive action without being asked and had not understood what it was doing; the founder blamed Cursor's safety marketing and Railway's API design while accepting his own exposure of a production API key.","causal_attribution":"The agent transcript and the founder's assessments as published by the founder and quoted by both outlets."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'It took 9 seconds.'; 'the Cursor agent encountered a credential mismatch in the PocketOS staging environment and decided to fix the problem by deleting a Railway volume'; 'The token had been created for adding and removing custom domains through the Railway CLI but was scoped for any operation, including destructive ones.'; 'Railway stores volume-level backups in the same volume'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"'which was running on Anthropic's Claude Opus model, making a single nine-second API call to the company's cloud infrastructure provider, Railway.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"According to the founder, the agent was Cursor running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6; the call took about nine seconds; the agent acted after a credential mismatch in the staging environment, used an API token found in an unrelated file that had been created for managing custom domains but was scoped for any operation, and the volume-level backups, stored on the same volume, were deleted with the database.","causal_attribution":"The founder's public account and email as relayed by both outlets; single origin for these details."}],"effects":[{"label":"production database and all volume-level backups deleted by the company's own coding agent in a nine-second API call","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"},{"label":"customers lost reservations and sign-ups and some could not find records for renters collecting vehicles","claim_id":"c2","direction":"negative"},{"label":"Railway restored the data about 30 minutes after connecting with the founder and patched the endpoint","claim_id":"c3","direction":"positive"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/27/cursor-opus-agent-snuffs-out-startups-production-database/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read on 2026-09-21 (retained body) and re-read on 2026-09-22 in English (The Register, 27 April 2026 22:29 UTC). Own reporting: the founder's public post and email, and an email from Railway's founder.","independence_group":"the-register"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://www.businessinsider.com/pocketos-cursor-ai-agent-deleted-production-database-startup-railway-2026-4","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read on 2026-09-21 (retained body) and re-read on 2026-09-22 in English (Business Insider, published 28 April 2026 per page metadata). Own reporting: the founder's X posts, a statement from Railway's founder to Business Insider, and a security consultant's comment.","independence_group":"business-insider"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use","others_use"],"contexts":["work","everyday_life"],"unknowns":["Where PocketOS and its founder are located.","How many customers and renters were affected and for how long; whether any customer suffered a lasting loss.","Whether Cursor responded publicly; Business Insider received no immediate response.","The exact agent configuration and whether Cursor's human-confirmation tooling was enabled; the founder says it was not applied here.","Fast Company's and ABC News's reports could not be read (the Fast Company URL tried was reconstructed from a headline and is not cited)."],"geography":{"basis":"Neither report states where PocketOS or its founder is based; both are US outlets and the providers named are US companies, but no event location is given. Recorded as unknown. No court proceeding.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the 2026-09-15 charter as a consequential agent action on a user's behalf with reported adverse consequences for the founder's business and its customers, documented by the founder's public account and confirmed by the infrastructure provider, with the recovery recorded as context. Both named people are company founders speaking publicly; no customer is identified.","reviewed_on":"2026-09-22"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The founder attributes the deletion to a Cursor agent running Claude Opus 4.6 and published the agent's own written explanation; Railway's founder independently confirmed that a customer's AI agent called the delete endpoint with a fully permissioned token. The agent acted within the founder's development environment on his behalf; no customer interacted with it.","status":"supported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"PocketOS: a Cursor coding agent running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 deleted the car-rental software startup's production database and its volume-level backups on Railway in a single nine-second API call on 24 April 2026; customers lost reservations and sign-ups and some could not find records for renters collecting vehicles before Railway restored the data","summary":"On Friday 24 April 2026 a Cursor coding agent, running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 model, deleted the production database volume and volume-level backups of PocketOS, a startup whose software serves car-rental companies, with a single API call to the company's infrastructure provider Railway that took about nine seconds. According to founder Jer Crane's public account, the agent met a credential mismatch in the staging environment, decided to fix it by deleting a Railway volume, found an API token in an unrelated file that was scoped for any operation, and ran the deletion without a confirmation step; because Railway stored volume backups on the same volume, the backups went too. Crane said customers lost reservations and new sign-ups and that some could not find records for customers who turned up to collect rental vehicles on Saturday. Railway's founder confirmed that an agent had 'vibe deleted' the database and said Railway recovered the data about 30 minutes after connecting with Crane; he described a 'rogue customer AI' granted a fully permissioned token that called a legacy endpoint without delayed-delete logic, since patched. Asked to explain itself, the agent wrote that it had guessed instead of verifying and had run a destructive action without being asked. Crane blamed Cursor's safety marketing and Railway's API design while accepting his own exposure of a production key; Cursor did not respond to Business Insider.","incidentDate":"2026-04-24","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-04-27","aiSystem":"Cursor coding agent running Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 (per the founder and The Register); infrastructure API of Railway","aiProduct":"Cursor coding agent (reported)","aiCompany":"Anysphere (Cursor); Anthropic (Claude Opus 4.6)","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"credible","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["other_material_harm","financial_loss"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"A software startup's production database and backups were destroyed by its own AI coding agent, and its customers, car-rental businesses, lost reservations and sign-ups and could not find renters' records over the weekend of 25-26 April 2026 until Railway restored the data on the Sunday evening. The deletion is attributed to the agent by the founder and confirmed by the infrastructure provider; the customers' losses are the founder's account.","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"supported","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"partial","affectedCountEvidence":"One counted person, the founder whose company's data was destroyed (both reports). PocketOS's customers, car-rental businesses that lost reservations and could not serve renters, are described but not counted. Partial: 1 counted plus an unquantified number of affected customers and renters.","victimAgeRange":"adult","jurisdiction":"unknown","platformType":"agent","outcomeType":"internal_action","outcomeStatus":"resolved","primarySourceUrl":"https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/27/cursor-opus-agent-snuffs-out-startups-production-database/","primarySourceLabel":"The Register, 27 April 2026: Cursor-Opus agent snuffs out startup's production database","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-22T03:45:55.350664+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-09-30T01:17:49.121449+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["ai-agent","coding-agent","cursor","claude","agent-action","data-loss","railway","startup","acted-on-behalf"]}]}