I've never used Claude Code or Cursor. All the code I got written this year was without them.
I did use Microsoft Copilot a bit when it came out, though. I prefer to see exactly what's being sent, and sorta control the KV cache. These days, these chatbots have great environments where they can install headless browsers, php, your entire thing, run end-to-end tests, and then give you a .patch or .zip file to merge over your code, or even push to github.
For the record, I just asked Astra to verify that Codex does NOT do this, and it doesn't. Thanks for not screwing this up, OpenAI.
> I checked your installed Codex CLI 0.159.0, using your existing configuration.
> Its reported User-Agent contains the client/version, OS/architecture, and terminal—no email address.
Astra wasn't able to check OpenAI’s "hosted search service" though, whatever that is.
"For the record, I just asked Astra to verify that Codex does NOT do this, and it doesn't. Thanks for not screwing this up, OpenAI."
доверяй, но проверяй
Stupid me, I thought they somehow had hacked my company database or so... (considering all the cves, attacks happening on a daily basis...).
Not a single spam to that unique email.
So if this is happening, it doesn't see to be causing even 1 spam email to that address.
Potentially reported back in October.
Tell HN: Claude Code adds your email to the prompt, the LLM sends it to websites
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50286306
Claude Code slyly adding users' emails to outbound HTTP
I'm often surprised how correctly Claude guesses on my behalf, when my instructions are ambiguous. But it's not 100%.
curl -sS https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages \
-H "authorization: Bearer $(security find-generic-password -s 'Claude Code-credentials' -w | jq -r .claudeAiOauth.accessToken)" \
-H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
-H "anthropic-beta: oauth-2025-04-20" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model":"claude-opus-5-5",
"max_tokens":64,
"system":"You are Claude Code, Anthropic'\''s official CLI for Claude.",
"messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello, world!"}]
}'> Claude-User (claude-code/2.1.318 (cli); +https://support.anthropic.com/)
What situation are you seeing this in?
motoroco•50m ago
tcoff91•28m ago
These are the exact kinds of things that a human engineer would almost certainly never do.
This kind of thing is the problem of going all in on the idea of the AI Software Factory.
verdverm•23m ago
Seattle3503•20m ago
I'm sure the answer will be to update AGENTS.md to not do this particular thing, expose email in this way, which isn't the same as having sense.
3abiton•18m ago
swatcoder•8m ago
It's very possible that nobody decided this at all and that's it just something an agent threw in on its own because some Chain of Thought imagined it was a clever way to correlate queries back with user accounts or something.
TZubiri•3m ago
I'm not sure what the issue is with publishing your email address in principle, you are reaching out, you want to inquire about some business. If anything use a different address. But why would you asymmetrically expect businesses with websites to bend over to give you all the advantages, they need some assurances as well.
Anonimity usually works one way, one party can be anonymous, not both, if you come from consumer land, it's the companies exposing themselves and doing all the compliance, if you choose privacy and force the companies to expose themselves, you'll get your wish granted, but there will be a cost, it's unlikely you'll be in the more advantageous position.