Krux
February 10, 2026
Popular AI Chat App Leaked 300M Messages. Oops.
Published: February 10, 2026 at 12:45 AM
Updated: February 10, 2026 at 12:45 AM
100-word summary
Chat & Ask AI, a wrapper app connecting users to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models, exposed roughly 300 million messages from over 25 million users—half its claimed user base. Security researcher Harry discovered the mess: a Google Firebase misconfiguration left full chat histories wide open, including prompts about suicide and drug manufacturing. The app's developers patched it by January 20, but Firehound's registry showed 406,000+ exposed files lingering as of January 15. This could mean your "private" AI chats aren't so private after all.
What happened
Chat & Ask AI, a wrapper app connecting users to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models, exposed roughly 300 million messages from over 25 million users—half its claimed user base. Security researcher Harry discovered the mess: a Google Firebase misconfiguration left full chat histories wide open, including prompts about suicide and drug manufacturing. The app's developers patched it by January 20, but Firehound's registry showed 406,000+ exposed files lingering as of January 15.
Why it matters
This could mean your "private" AI chats aren't so private after all.