Anthropic bans account that used Claude to profile citizens in Iran and Gulf states

Anthropic shut down an account in June 2026 after discovering it had been used to build a surveillance platform that classified social media users across Iran and the Persian Gulf by their political loyalties, physical locations, and demographic profiles. The account was tied to S2T Unlocking Cyberspace, a surveillance-for-hire firm that previous investigations by organizations like Forbidden Stories have flagged for similar work. The platform was caught in its pilot phase. No confirmed real-world targeting of actual individuals has been verified. What the threat report revealed The ban was disclosed in Anthropic’s threat-intelligence report published on September 10, 2026, covering misuse activity from December 2025 through August 2026. The operator behind the account reportedly amassed over 255 counterfeit social media personas spread across four languages: Persian, Arabic, English, and German. These fake accounts were designed to infiltrate both pro- and anti-government communities inside Iran. Anthropic’s existing safeguards managed to block explicit profiling requests. But some surveillance-related software tooling slipped through. The report also flagged separate incidents in...