On November 11, 2026, security firm Claroc published a report: of 37,571 still-running apps built with Grok that it checked, 35,578 could be opened without logging in — 94.7%. The problem is in the default setting at publishing time: in Claroc's test on a paid account, the publish dialog had "Anyone with the link" preselected — anyone who knows the link can view it.
How these apps were found
Every published app gets its own grok.me subdomain, and after its first visit it lands in commercial passive DNS databases, where it can be searched by pattern. About one in ten accessible apps contained sensitive material, internal business data, or personal information, and about 2% were especially serious; an estimated 650 to 800 apps contained private data. Confirmed cases include: an ICU briefing containing a patient's lab values, an employee list of more than 3,500 people at a hospital group, a fire department shift schedule, and a timesheet app whose source code contained 18 accounts with plaintext passwords. At least 30 organizations were affected, including 6 Fortune 500 companies.
Not even the company's own employees escaped
24 of the accessible apps came from employees of SpaceXSI and X themselves, including a new sales team member's onboarding plan (with internal system addresses and 19 chat channels), a sales territory map marking 594 strategic accounts, and 8 advertising proposals (one of them targeting a US federal agency, marked confidential). Claroc's own tests also found a permissions logic problem: one contact-list app's database had no login protection, so anonymous visitors could add records; another customer-list app added every Google or X account that logged in to the team first and only checked membership afterward, so outside accounts could read, edit, and delete records. Write and delete tests were run only on its own apps.
Where the boundaries lie
Grok does have the right option: switching to "Only you" blocks outside access, and ChatGPT's new apps also default to visible only to their creator. SpaceXSI responded that apps are private before sharing, that publishing takes several steps including a legal notice, and that employee accounts default to "Only you." Claroc's counter: the final step still preselects public sharing, and the 24 employee apps are the proof. SpaceXSI has taken down only those 24 employee apps and has not cleaned up other users' public apps; Claroc is now notifying those affected directly. One more disclosure: Claroc itself sells security solutions for AI-built apps, so the report carries a commercial interest. This is the third privacy incident involving Grok: in August 2025, more than 370,000 shared conversations turned up in Google Search; in July 2026, Grok Build was accused of uploading user files without asking. Another Grok story the same day concerns multiple class-action lawsuits — a different matter, about abusive generated content.
Anyone who has built an app with Grok should check their sharing settings now, switch public apps back to "Only you," and confirm their databases have login protection. What to watch next is whether SpaceXSI changes the default — until then, every new app published is another entry that can be found by search.
