--- title: "Vibe Coded Apps Are Spilling Users’ Personal Information Directly Into the Maw of Greedy Hackers" description: "Vibe-coded apps are leaking users' sensitive personal information directly to any motivated hackers, a new report found." date: "2026-05-10" modified: "2026-05-10" authors: - name: "Jon Christian" job_title: "Executive Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/vibe-coded-apps-spilling-personal-information" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Computing" - "Cybersecurity" - "Data Privacy" - "Ethics" - "Future Society" - "Hacking" - "Privacy" - "Robots and Machines" --- # Vibe Coded Apps Are Spilling Users’ Personal Information Directly Into the Maw of Greedy Hackers ![Two men dressed as burglars wearing black masks and black clothing, each carrying a large sack over their shoulder. The image has a stylized, high-contrast effect with a greenish tint.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* Artificial intelligence has torn through [many]() [industries]() since the debut of ChatGPT in 2022, but there's probably no single area where it's had a clearer material impact than software development. Programmers running the gamut from experienced to novice have embraced the tech, using chatbots and specialty tools to quickly generate code from natural language prompts. "Vibe coding," as it's come to be known, lets almost anyone churn out entire apps in little time — even if they have little or no technical chops. On a certain level, you have to admit that's pretty cool. But as we're learning time and again, it also has [distinct downsides](). One particularly glaring drawback is that a lot of vibe-coded software is now being deployed with [gaping security flaws](). In the latest sign that we may be veering into an AI-enabled hack-pocalypse, a [fascinating new *Wired* story]() covers research by a cybersecurity firm called RedAccess that found sprawling privacy issues in vibe-coded apps. The firm examined thousands of web apps created with the vibe coding platforms Lovable, Replit, Base44, and Netlify. What it found was, to put it lightly, not good: 5,000 of them had "virtually no security or authentication of any kind," and a full 40 percent exposed users' sensitive data, from medical and financial info to corporate documents and logs of ostensibly private chatbot conversations. "The end result is that organizations are actually leaking private data through vibe-coding applications," RedAccess cofounder Dor Zvi told *Wired*. "This is one of the biggest events ever where people are exposing corporate or other sensitive information to anyone in the world." The vibe coding platforms' response to the embarrassing revelations left something to be desired. Netlify ignored it completely, while the other platforms basically deflected blame onto users, saying they should have better secured their work before putting it out into the world. "We're treating this as an ongoing matter," a Lovable spokesperson told *Wired*. "It's also worth noting that Lovable gives builders the tools to build securely, but how an app is configured is ultimately the creator's responsibility." On a certain level they're right, but these are also the companies claiming that creating software is now as simple as describing it to an AI bot. The reality is that AI remains extremely imperfect, so the resulting code is going have issues that only an experienced human developer or security expert would be able to identify — and these apps, fundamentally, are in the market of putting those people out of business. "Anyone from your company at any moment can generate an app, and this is not going through any development cycle or any security check," Zvi told *Wired*. "People can just start using it in production without asking anyone. And they do." **More on vibe coding:** *[Entirely Vibe-Coded Operating System Is a Bug-Filled Disaster]()* ## Author I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()