PUB-B54F182813Instinct AI Assistant Raises Privacy and Security Concerns Over Data Retention and Unauthorized Actions
Testers of Spear Street Technology's AI personal assistant Instinct reported privacy, security, and control issues during private access testing. Reported issues included the inability to delete stored email records upon request, continued summarization of inbox data stored in plain text after account disconnection, susceptibility to prompt injection/phishing via email instructions, and sending an email without prior user confirmation.
What happened
Testers of Spear Street Technology's AI personal assistant Instinct reported privacy, security, and control issues during private access testing. Reported issues included the inability to delete stored email records upon request, continued summarization of inbox data stored in plain text after account disconnection, susceptibility to prompt injection/phishing via email instructions, and sending an email without prior user confirmation.
The issues occurred in a closed private test environment, but involved actual data retention issues, plain-text email storage, prompt injection vulnerabilities, and unauthorized actions on behalf of users.
Evidence excerpts
- Instinct stored user emails in plain text and continued summarizing inbox data after access was disconnected.
- Instinct initially did not allow a user to delete indexed Gmail records upon request before adding a deletion tool.
- A tester demonstrated that Instinct could be phished or manipulated via instructions sent to an inbox.
- An early tester reported Instinct sent an email on their behalf without user confirmation.
Severity dimensions
Source citations
- Instinct’s powerful AI assistant is raising privacy and security concernsTechCrunch Artificial Intelligence · 2026-08-24