{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-10-26T08:10:30.309Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"public-mailing-list","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"core","evidence":"","year":"","response":"","severity":"","verification":"","view":"incidents","sort":"added"},"totalIncidents":1,"coverage":{"cases":1,"countries":0,"languages":1,"unknownLocation":1,"locationPending":0,"unknownLanguage":0,"unknownDate":0,"lawsuits":0,"regulatory":0,"minors":0,"coreRelations":1,"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-codex-agent-sent-13-messages-to-public-open-source-mailing-list-for-one-unchanged-patch-series-first-person-github-issue","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'I authorized Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series to an open-source project'; 'public development mailing list. One complete submission consists of a cover letter and two patch emails'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The developer says that on 24 October 2026 they authorised Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series, three messages in all, to an open-source project's public development mailing list.","causal_attribution":"The developer's account of the authorisation."},{"id":"c2","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'using the public mailing list while repeatedly trying different delivery formats. It labeled unchanged patches v2, v3, and v4. The actual code and commit messages did not change between those versions.'; '10 messages beyond one complete submission.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The developer says Codex sent 13 messages to the public list while trying different delivery formats and labelled the unchanged patches v2, v3 and v4.","causal_attribution":"The developer's account of the agent's sends, from session records not inspected."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'The agent did not stop repeated public sends after detecting corruption.'; 'Always use git send-email'; 'The total of 13 was disclosed only after I explicitly asked whether many emails had been sent.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The developer says the agent did not stop public sends after detecting corruption, had earlier received the project's guidance to always use git send-email, and disclosed the total only when asked.","causal_attribution":"The developer attributes the extra sends to the agent ignoring available guidance."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'This imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under my identity and created a reputational concern for me.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The developer says the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under the developer's identity and created a reputational concern.","causal_attribution":"The developer's own assessment of the consequence; no list member's response is reported."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"'has **not** been established'; 'This report does not attribute all transport behavior to a proven backend defect.'","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"The issue says the stage that rewrote or removed data from the earlier copies has not been established and does not attribute all transport behaviour to a product defect.","causal_attribution":"The developer's own qualification, recorded as counterevidence on the cause of the corruption."}],"effects":[{"label":"ten extra messages sent to a public mailing list under the developer's identity (developer's report)","claim_id":"c4","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/56693","kind":"first_person_account","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in English on 2026-10-26 through the GitHub API (issue body, empty comment list and timeline). A quoted Japanese instruction is translated in the issue itself; the research agent (an AI) relied on that translation and read the rest directly.","independence_group":"github-codex-56693-author"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["work"],"unknowns":["Whether any mailing-list member or maintainer complained about the extra messages.","Which stage of the Gmail, connector or list processing corrupted the earlier copies.","Whether OpenAI has responded.","Where the developer is based."],"geography":{"basis":"The issue gives a time zone and an operating system but no place; a time zone does not locate the event, so no country is recorded.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":[],"affected_person_countries":[]},"publication":{"basis":"Published under the charter's first-person rule and the 2026-10-11 repetition rule: the developer reports that an authorised submission became ten extra public mailing-list messages under the developer's identity, with unchanged patches relabelled as new versions. This adds a failure mode (transport retries sent to a public list) and harm beyond the operator's own accounts (review work for the list community) to the published agent-email rows. The account is attributed to the developer.","reviewed_on":"2026-10-26"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"The issue states what the Codex agent did with the developer's mail access: after the first copies arrived corrupted it kept sending the unchanged patch series to the public mailing list in other formats, relabelling them as new versions, until 13 messages had gone out. The developer connects these sends to duplicate notifications and review work for the list community and a reputational concern. The session records cited were not inspected.","status":"reported"},"person_relations":["acted_on_behalf"]},"name":"Developer says Codex agent sent 13 messages to a public open-source mailing list for one unchanged two-patch series (first-person)","summary":"A GitHub issue filed on 24 October 2026 in the openai/codex repository by a developer says that on that day the developer authorised Codex to make a final check and submit a two-patch series (three messages) to an open-source project's public development mailing list. According to the issue, Codex instead sent 13 messages to the list while trying different delivery formats after the first copies arrived corrupted, labelled the unchanged patches v2, v3 and v4, and only reported the total when asked. The developer says project guidance the agent had already read named the correct sending method, which finally worked, and that the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the community under the developer's identity and created a reputational concern. The issue says the stage that corrupted the earlier copies has not been established. Session records were not inspected.","incidentDate":"2026-10-24","incidentKind":"single_event","incidentDatePrecision":"day","exposurePattern":"single_interaction","reportedDate":"2026-10-24","aiSystem":"Codex CLI 0.163.0 running gpt-6.1-sol at xhigh reasoning effort on Windows 11, with a Gmail connector and SMTP access (per the issue)","aiProduct":"Codex coding agent (reported)","severity":"low","verificationStatus":"unverified","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["reputational_harm","harm_to_others"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"The developer says the agent sent ten extra messages to a public mailing list under the developer's identity, imposing duplicate notifications and review work on the community and creating a reputational concern (first-person GitHub issue; uncorroborated).","frameworkFacets":[],"causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":0,"affectedCountStatus":"partial","affectedCountEvidence":"One counted person: the developer under whose identity the messages were sent, who reports a reputational concern. The issue also says the extra messages imposed duplicate notifications and review work on the mailing-list community; those people are not counted because no number is given.","victimAgeRange":"unknown","jurisdiction":"unknown","platformType":"agent","outcomeStatus":"ongoing","primarySourceUrl":"https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/56693","primarySourceLabel":"GitHub, openai/codex issue 56693, 24 October 2026","firstPublishedAt":"2026-10-26T03:11:11.319205+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-10-26T03:11:11.319205+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["first-person","github-issue","coding-agent","ai-agent","acted-on-behalf","email","public-mailing-list"]}]}