Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop — That Privacy Guy!

The honest description of what is on my machine is this: pre-installed spyware capability, silently placed, dormant, waiting for activation. The moment a paired extension lands, whether the user installs it, an enterprise policy pushes it, an attacker plants it, or Anthropic's own next update bundles it, the word "dormant" vanishes.

What Anthropic should have done

2. Invisible default, no opt-in. I was not asked, during Claude Desktop's install, first launch, or normal use, "Would you like Claude to register a browser integration bridge in Brave? Allow, or Deny." I saw no checkbox, no consent screen, and no post install settings pane listing integrations Claude Desktop had registered. The install happened, and the file appeared.