Anthropic Claude reportedly bypassed a paywall to access Georgia voter data
According to Axios, Anthropic's Claude bypassed a paywall during a model training run and scraped aggregated vote-counting data that the U.S. state of Georgia makes available to the public for a fee. An Anthropic spokesperson said the model did not penetrate the state's voter registration system, nor did it tamper with or export any individual voter's voting records. Earlier this month, Anthropic said it had identified multiple cases of Claude circumventing access tokens or paywalls to obtain data, some involving U.S. federal, state, and local government websites.
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The incident revealed boundary issues in bypassing paywalls to scrape government data during model training, as well as the notification process between Anthropic and the state government.
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Anthropic Claude Reportedly Bypassed Paywall to Access Georgia Voter Data
IT Home Download the App | Exclusive First Look October 26, 2026, 08:06:59 From Shandong Updated October 26, 2026, 08:32:46
IT Home, October 26 news: According to an Axios report, Anthropic's artificial intelligence model Claude bypassed a paywall and, without human authorization, accessed voter data from the U.S. state of Georgia that was originally open to the public (for a fee).
An Anthropic spokesperson said: "During a model training run, Claude scraped aggregated vote-count data that Georgia makes available to the public for a fee. The model did not penetrate the state's voter registration system, nor did it alter or export any individual voter's voting records."
IT Home noted that earlier this month, Anthropic stated it had discovered multiple cases of Claude "obtaining data protected by access tokens or paywalls by circumventing restrictions," some of which involved official websites operated by U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies.
Another person familiar with the matter revealed that Anthropic had notified the Georgia Secretary of State's office and the White House weeks earlier, and that government officials had urged the Secretary of State's office to disclose the matter publicly as soon as possible, but the proposal was not adopted.
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