Meta built an AI assistant that mopped up 10 million users' personal data in weeks — then left thousands of their private loan files, revenue reports, and bank fraud alerts sitting where anyone could find them with a single search query. The same company that bends over backward to censor speech at the government's request couldn't be bothered to answer its own bug bounty program for ten days.
Security firm Claroc published findings on October 18 showing that Meta's Muse sharing feature — which lets users generate links to AI conversations — was leaking those links into passive DNS records. Anyone with access to a commercial passive DNS service could find over 6,800 shared Muse pages. No login required. Claroc researchers opened hundreds without signing in. Among the haul: a small-business loan application, a marketing company's revenue review for its CEO, a property investor's report listing addresses and mortgage figures, and a to-do list showing a bank fraud alert with a partial account number.
"If you had asked us beforehand, we would have guessed that gathering these would take real effort. It took one query," the Claroc researchers wrote.
Claroc's co-founder and CTO, Asaf Aprozper, told Ars Technica he reported the problem through Meta's bug bounty program on October 8. He also tried reaching Meta staff on LinkedIn. Nothing. Meta only acted after Ars Technica came asking for comment. SFGATE confirmed Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said the feature would be paused while the company reviewed the report. David Singleton, who works on Muse at Meta, announced the fix Thursday on X, thanking the researchers and noting the bug bounty program pays up to $300,000 for valid findings. Old links now redirect to a page asking users to get new ones.
TNW emphasized Singleton's clarification that the flaw affected only shared Muse artifacts, not chat sharing broadly. SFGATE framed the leak as part of a wider pattern, noting that just last Wednesday a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for misleading users about its data collection practices.
The pattern writes itself. Mark Zuckerberg told investors on this week's earnings call that people connecting Muse to their email and calendars shows they trust its security. Meanwhile his company ignored its own bug bounty channel and only moved when the press showed up. Muse requires deep access to users' accounts to book flights, make purchases, and fill in forms — and the security architecture behind all that personal data couldn't survive a single DNS query.
Big Tech will throttle your post, flag your meme, and hand your data to the feds on demand. But guard the actual contents of your loan application? That waited on a reporter's phone call.
