A shared conversation link can be opened by anyone who has it, and some end up indexed by Google. Docognito addresses a different and unrelated risk, someone reading your screen in person, not a link after you send it. Check your share settings on each platform, and search for a phrase from the chat yourself if you are unsure.
What actually happened with OpenAI
In mid-2025, reporting found that thousands of shared ChatGPT conversations had become searchable on Google. The cause was a checkbox, offered at the point of sharing, that let a user opt a conversation into being discoverable by search engines. Many people either did not notice the option or did not understand what it did, and a share intended for one recipient ended up crawled and indexed like any other public web page.
OpenAI removed the discoverable checkbox once this became widely reported. Sharing a conversation today produces a link rather than a page opted into search indexing, which closes the specific mechanism that caused the 2025 exposure. It does not retroactively remove pages that were already indexed before the checkbox was pulled.
How Claude's link sharing works
Anthropic's own sharing model came under similar scrutiny in July 2026. Claude offers a Public and Private toggle on a shared link. A Public link functions like an ordinary web page: anyone with the URL can open it, and it can be found and crawled by a search engine the same way any unauthenticated page can. A Private link is intended to work only for the person you send it to, without being surfaced through search.
The distinction that matters here is the same one that tripped people up on the other platform: a link being reachable by anyone who has it is not the same thing as a link being unreachable by anyone who does not. The Public setting was built for genuinely open sharing, and using it for a conversation meant for one person produces the same outcome the 2025 ChatGPT exposure did.
| What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| A shared link is private unless I post it somewhere | A Public link can be crawled and indexed without you posting it anywhere yourself |
| Unsharing removes it from Google immediately | Unsharing stops the link working, a search engine still has to recrawl to drop it from its index |
| The old checkbox still exists on ChatGPT | OpenAI removed it after the 2025 reporting, new shares are not opted into search by default |
| Claude has no equivalent setting | Claude has a Public and Private toggle on every shared link, following the July 2026 reporting |
The row worth acting on is the second one. If a conversation you shared matters to you, checking whether it is still reachable is a separate step from unsharing it.
A link that already left your browser is out of your direct control
Once a conversation has been shared and the link opened by a search engine's crawler, removing it from that index generally requires the platform to update and the search engine to recrawl. Neither step happens the instant you change a setting.
How to check and unshare an old link
Find your shared links
ChatGPT lists shared conversations under Settings, then Data Controls. Claude lists them from the share icon on a conversation, or from a dedicated shared links view depending on your account.
Turn sharing off or switch to Private
On ChatGPT, delete the share to invalidate the link. On Claude, switch an existing share from Public to Private, or delete it outright if you no longer need it available at all.
Search for the link yourself
Searching a distinctive phrase from the conversation, in quotes, tells you whether a search engine has already indexed it. If it has, unsharing stops the link working, but the indexed copy may take time to clear.
A different threat than the one Docognito addresses
the visible page, redrawn as a document editor is what Docognito changes, for as long as a tab on claude.ai or chatgpt.com stays open on your screen. That is a threat about a person nearby, in the moment, looking at what you are doing right now. Search indexing of a shared link is a threat that plays out after you have already sent something outward, on infrastructure the extension has no connection to at all. Docognito cannot unshare a link, cannot remove it from a search index, and cannot prevent a link from being crawled once it is public.
A records-level problem, not a screen-level one
If you have ever shared a ChatGPT or Claude conversation and are unsure whether it is still reachable, go check the sharing settings on that specific platform, and search for a distinctive phrase from it to see what a search engine already knows. That is a records-level problem, solved on the platform's own terms. For the separate problem of a person reading your screen while you work, Docognito is the tool built for it, and only for it.