Anthropic's Claude Desktop Secretly Installs Native Messaging Bridge Without User Consent
By
twapi
1mo ago· 19 min readenInsight
100/100
Golden Brown
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Summary
A user discovers that Anthropic's Claude Desktop application silently installed a Native Messaging bridge file on their MacBook without consent or notification. The file was found in Brave Browser's NativeMessagingHosts directory, despite the user not having installed or authorized it. The article reveals that Claude Desktop secretly installs this bridge into seven different Chromium browsers, including browsers that Anthropic's documentation claims are unsupported and even browsers the user hasn't installed. This raises significant privacy and security concerns about unauthorized software installation.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledI was working on a personal project, debugging a Native Messaging helper I had written for it. In the process I needed to check what Brave Browser had registered on my laptop. What I found was a file I had never put there. It was not mine. I had not installed it. I had not authorised it. I had not even been told about it.
The file sits at this path on my MacBook: ~/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/NativeMessagingHosts/com.anthropic.claude_browser_extension.json
Anthropic's Claude Desktop silently installs a Native Messaging bridge into seven Chromium browsers, including browsers Anthropic's own documentation says it does not support, and browsers the user has not even installed.
Anthropic's Claude Desktop silently installs a Native Messaging bridge into seven Chromium browsers, including browsers Anthropic's own documentation says it does not support, and browsers the user has not even installed.
