If Anthropic decided to just send the user timezone as plain text instead of doing this obfuscated way, like "Today's date is 2026-06-30, timezone is Asia/Shanghai", how many of us will catch and question this behavior? It looks perfectly normal, right?
The question is about accountability. Right now these big closed-source model companies can do whatever with the data, and no one can hold them accountable for unacceptable data handling decisions.
The question is about accountability. Right now these big closed-source model companies can do whatever with the data, and no one can hold them accountable for unacceptable data handling decisions.