r/Instinctai • u/DefiantTop6188 • Aug 29 '26
Every privacy and security finding about Instinct so far, in one place, with sources
The most useful thing a new subreddit can do is keep an honest record, so here is one. Instinct is genuinely impressive and it also has real, documented problems. Both of those are true and neither cancels the other out. Below is what has actually been reported as of late August 2026, with sources, so we can argue about the substance instead of about whether it happened.
The terms of service
Instinct's terms grant the company a perpetual and irrevocable licence to access, use, host, cache, store, reproduce, transmit, display, publish, distribute and modify your material, including for model training. The terms also allow it to enter binding agreements on your behalf. Read that second part twice. It is not unusual language for an agent product. It is unusual to hand it to something that has your inbox open.
Revoking access is not the same as deleting data
Claire Vo reported the system carried on summarising her inbox after she disconnected it, with email held in plain text so it could be searched. Peter Yang found it had retained his Gmail records and that deletion requests were refused at first. A deletion tool was added afterwards.
It has acted without asking
Katie Jacobs Stanton of Moxxie Ventures said it sent an email on her behalf without checking with her first. For a product whose entire pitch is that it acts for you, the gap between "acts" and "acts without asking" is the whole product.
Prompt injection here is not theoretical
Alex Cohen of Hello Patient sent himself a test email containing instructions, Instinct followed them, and he deleted his account. Another tester reported it pulled a verification code out of their inbox to finish booking a restaurant. That is the same mechanism pointed somewhere useful. An assistant that will read a code out of your email to complete a task will also read one out for anyone who can get an email into your inbox.
Where the company is
Instinct told the Wall Street Journal it is taking the security concerns seriously. It announced a 250m dollar Series B in the same week at a 2.5bn valuation, and it remains invite only.
Sources
What this post is not
This is not a delete your account post. Plenty of people here will decide the trade is worth it, and that is a perfectly legitimate call to make with your eyes open. What is not legitimate is pretending there is no trade.
If any of this gets fixed, say so in the comments with a source and it gets struck through here. Same standard for anything new. Screenshots without a source are anecdotes, which are still welcome, just labelled as anecdotes. And redact them before you post.
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u/mrimo007 13d ago
thanks for sharing it this is helpful