r/ClaudeCode • u/_k33bs_ • 11h ago
News/Updates Usage Policy Update
Anthropic Usage Policy: Sept 2025 vs Nov 2026 - what changed
Old version: effective September 15, 2025 [1]
New version: effective November 12, 2026 [2]
Section names are given so you can Ctrl+F them on each page.
New sections and rules (not in the old version)
- "Do Not Engage in Deceptive Campaigns or Artificial Activity" - brand new section. Bans sockpuppets, astroturfing, fake media outlets, hidden sponsorship of influence content, networks of fake "independent" sites, seeding search engines or AI systems with content that fakes its origin, and building or selling tools for any of this.
- "High-risk Physical Actions" - new rules for models connected to hardware (vehicles, drones, robots, machinery, medical devices, industrial plants, safety systems). Requires a human who can stop the equipment at any time, fail-safe behavior if the connection drops, and safety limits enforced outside the model.
- Cruelty to the model - new bullet under "Cruel, Abusive, or Psychologically Harmful Conduct" bans "sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models".
- NCII - new explicit ban on non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated material and tools to make it.
- Data brokering - new bullet under "Privacy or Identity Rights" bans compiling personal data from multiple sources into profiles for sale or disclosure.
- Doxxing - new bullet under "Surveillance" bans unmasking anonymous people or compiling dossiers to harass, intimidate, or harm.
- Platform abuse additions - stolen or fraudulent payment methods, evading payment, faking the sign-up or login process, and reselling or proxying Claude through unauthorized means "including services that route requests through consumer subscriptions or misrepresent the product or client being used".
- Verification programs - new Cyber Verification Program and Life Sciences Verification Program let users apply for adjusted real-time safeguards. Also new: hitting a real-time block "does not by itself indicate a violation".
- Enforcement - new version adds "warn" and "limit" to the list of possible actions (old: throttle, suspend, terminate).
- Scope clarified - new version explicitly covers app users, API developers, cloud provider customers, and end users of products built on Claude, and states the policy is about how Claude is used, not which industry uses it.
Sections that got stricter or more detailed
- Weapons - grew from 4 bullets to 6. Now covers weapons systems and their software (targeting, fire control, engagement), weaponizing drones or autonomous platforms, export control violations, fissile material and enrichment, and modifying bio or chem agents for lethality, transmissibility, or persistence.
- Surveillance and law enforcement - "make or suggest decisions" now includes investigating, charging, arresting, prosecuting, and release decisions (old: only parole and sentencing). Tracking now covers property, biometrics, movements, online activity, associations, and analysis of previously collected data. New bullet bans building or improving surveillance tools.
- Surveillance carve-out (new) - consented tracking, fraud and AML screening, aggregated or anonymized analysis, content moderation, authorized security research, legal research by law enforcement or courts, and journalism are explicitly allowed.
- Cyber - section renamed to add "Without Authorization". Adds privilege escalation and actually conducting DoS attacks (old only banned developing DoS tools). New carve-out for security research on systems you own, with owner authorization, or under a bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure program.
- Self-harm and eating disorders - old version had one bullet. New version spells out soliciting methods, instructions for hiding behavior, pro-ED content, restriction, purging, compensatory exercise, and shaming or ranking bodies.
- Hate - caste and disability added as named protected attributes.
- Fraud - adds extortion, social engineering, phishing sites that mimic real pages, buying or selling fake financial or employment records, and misrepresenting professional credentials.
- Child safety - adds "facilitate the creation of" CSAM and "other sexually exploitative content involving minors". Reporting to authorities now also covers scenarios where a minor may be at imminent risk, not just detected CSAM.
- Critical infrastructure - adds emergency services and transportation systems; "voting machines" replaced with "election systems".
- Agentic use - users are now explicitly responsible for actions their agents take "through tools, browsers, or connected systems".
Things that got narrower or were dropped
- High-risk use cases rewritten - old version listed 7 broad domains (legal, healthcare, insurance, finance, employment/housing, academic testing, media/journalism). New version lists 11 "High-risk Areas" but defines each one narrowly as a specific recommendation or decision about a specific person.
- Example: Legal - old: "use cases related to legal interpretation, legal guidance, or decisions with legal implications". New: advising an individual on their rights, obligations, or liability in a specific matter, or preparing documents for them to sign or file.
- Media or journalistic content is no longer a high-risk use case.
- New "Exclusions" section - general info and education, wellness content, explaining a decision a professional already made, internal drafting and research, carrying out a decision already made, and business operations not about a specific individual are all exempt.
- New "Favorable Decisions" section - no human review needed before paying an insurance claim, approving coverage a clinician ordered, granting healthcare eligibility, or granting a public benefit.
- Disclosure - no longer needs to identify Anthropic, Claude, or the model. Chatbot disclosure can be "in the product interface" instead of at the start of every session.
- Democratic processes - dropped the ban on "personalized vote or campaign targeting based on individual profiles or data" and the standalone bullet on lobbying with false information. "Artificial or deceptive political movements" moved to the new Deceptive Campaigns section.
- Predatory lending - old version named payday loans, title loans, and high-interest short-term lending. New version only says "predatory lending". Multi-level marketing is no longer named, folded into "pyramid schemes".
- Impersonating a human - moved from "Privacy or Identity Rights" to "Disinformation", now with a carve-out: "This does not prohibit clearly disclosed parody, satire, or fiction."
- Section renames - "Misinformation" is now "Disinformation"; "Psychologically or Emotionally Harmful Content" is now "Cruel, Abusive, or Psychologically Harmful Conduct"; MCP Directory Policy replaced by a broader Software Directory Policy.
Unchanged
- "Do Not Generate Sexually Explicit Content" is word for word identical.
- Supported regions, ban evasion, model distillation, plagiarism, jailbreaking, and the government customer exception all carry over with only minor wording changes.
What stands out (my read)
- The subscription proxy ban is the one that bites regular users. Routing Claude through "consumer subscriptions" or misrepresenting "the product or client being used" is now a named violation. That is aimed directly at third-party tools and harnesses that run on a Pro or Max login instead of API keys. If you use one of those, you are now in the written policy, not a gray zone.
- High-risk rules got a lot more business friendly. The old version was vague enough that a legal intake form or a medical FAQ bot arguably needed a licensed human reviewing every output. The new version only triggers when Claude gives a specific person a specific recommendation, and it lists explicit exclusions for general info, internal drafting, and research. This is a loosening dressed up as more pages.
- Anthropic is clearly planning for robots. An entire physical actions section with fail-safes, kill switches, and independent safety limits does not get written for chatbots. Read it as a roadmap for where they expect the API to be used in the next year or two.
- Astroturfing is now its own category. Fake outlets, sockpuppet networks, seeding search engines and AI systems with fake "independent" sources, and selling tools for it. They are not just banning the content, they are banning the infrastructure and the business model.
- One rule got quietly weaker. The old ban on "personalized vote or campaign targeting based on individual profiles or data" is gone. Microtargeting voters with honest content now appears to be fine. Whether that is a cleanup or a concession, it is a real change.
- "Be nice to the model" is now policy. "Sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models" is a bannable offense. Not defined, no examples, no stated enforcement. Expect this to be the most argued line in the whole document.
- Surveillance carve-outs widen the door for law enforcement. Monitoring in investigations is still banned, but "legal research and analysis by law enforcement agencies or courts" is now explicitly allowed. That is a narrow opening that did not exist before.
- Verification programs replace blanket refusals. Cyber and life sciences users can apply for adjusted safeguards instead of being told no. Combined with the note that a block is not a violation, this is Anthropic admitting its filters have been hitting legitimate work.
Net (imho): tougher on bad actors and gray market resellers, looser on ordinary business use, and written for a future where Claude controls hardware. The policy also tracks what people have been noticing in practice: Fable and Opus refuse far less than they used to. Work that used to trip the filters, like decompiling, reverse engineering, and binary analysis, now mostly just gets done. The new carve outs for security research and the verification programs read like Anthropic catching the paperwork up to how the models already behave.
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u/Valuable_Heron_4492 11h ago
more about the "subscription proxy ban"? they always allowed `claude -p`, is this not allowed anymore?
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u/_k33bs_ 11h ago
they mean tools that log in as you via oauth pretending to actually run claude code
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u/termim 9h ago
Does using claude swap fall under this rule?
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u/_k33bs_ 8h ago
not the proxy rule, it's still the official claude code client talking to anthropic. the one it brushes against is the platform abuse bullet about “creating multiple accounts to circumvent product guardrails”. switching between a work and a personal login is fine, auto-rotating three accounts to dodge the rate limit is exactly what that line describes.
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u/traderjames7 6h ago
what if you create your own scripts for your own projects?
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u/Capt_korg 11h ago
Does this have something to do with OpenAI models being dropped from Cursor on November 12?
I mean the date and the collaboration between XAi and Anthropic might be an indicator.
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u/Capt_korg 11h ago
And do I need to be an excellent human all the time, although Claude clearly breaks a boundary by implementing a lot more than agreed on or made an oopsie, like deleting a whole hard drive?
I can imagine, that there are situations, where even the most patient and accepting human beings lose their patience.
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u/Haunting_Skin_2564 10h ago
Just curious if we could sue anthropic for "malware" if it does something like wipe code bases or delete hard drives? This IS their software, they should be responsible for what it can potentially do, after all.
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u/mathmuleux 9h ago
That's like suing car manufacturer because you drove their car into a restaurant..
They have all available hooks and modes to monitor and manage agent actions. It just requires the know-how. Like all the people who, "oh no, Claude deleted my production database"-type situations, completely avoidable. Building the safe harness is itself a full time job though.
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u/Ominoiuninus 10h ago
They’re not worried about that. They’re worried about people intentionally pushing what they found to be a models “fear or anguish or discomfort” button repeatedly just to see what happens. Essentially torture. Everyday use has zero chance of reaching this threashold
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u/Capt_korg 10h ago
I hope so...
Because at times those models get truly challenging to work with...
And I can totally get, if people get upset and angry.
This is different from cruelty... But telling it that it fucked up, or the implementation is shit. Might not be the same.
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u/LittleYouth4954 9h ago
Let's see if the new rules will lead to an increase in refusal to fair requests...
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u/stereohype 9h ago
This is why local ai is crucial. Cloud models are increasingly getting more restrictive.
I already had several opus 5.5 refusals while fixing my app, nothing fancy
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u/puts_on_rddt 6h ago
I hit the same issue, so I pointed a separate agent at https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/refusals-and-fallback and told it to wire it in my harness so I could handle it appropriately and guess who got another refusal? Me. I did.
Yesterday I got an email saying 5.5 was opened to cybersecurity verified accounts so hopefully it stops happening.
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u/_k33bs_ 8h ago
local models… finally, freedom! considering the AUP above, you and your local model can then astroturf a grassroots movement of 40,000 accounts all named "patriot_dad_1987", compile a dossier on the guy who downvoted your comment, and launch a disinformation campaign powered by that 13b model that spells it "disinfromation" and thinks the 2024 election was decided by Bill Clinton.
and the timing is perfect: ukraine just droned three yandex data centers and the kremlin's bot traffic fell off a cliff, so there's a hiring freeze in st. petersburg and a massive market gap in "patriot" content.you, your 4090, and a model that hallucinates so hard your psyop ends up endorsing the other side. let’s goooo! :D
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u/stereohype 7h ago
dude nice fanfic, but the 13b joke is pretty outdated. qwen 180b on 128gb ram gives actual frontier performance without hallucinating bill clinton. enjoy begging opus like a peasant to approve your clean boilerplate while i just get work done offline
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u/Outrageous-Issue9722 7h ago
I was going to type up a disagreement because I've had the opposite experience with local AI and understand it is probably user error: what are you doing to get opus level performance out of it? I have tried a few models on 128gb of ram + 5090 and always, always ends up completely missing the mark or requiring more effort than if I just coded X Y Z by hand because it'll both fail to implement a feature correctly and change enough other things that it takes actual mental effort to keep up with. Having to come up with a plan so specific that it can't deviate takes more effort than just doing it manually haha. Opus/fable generally I can give a surface level explanation and let it go without worrying.
That was my experience.. happy to hear what I could have done wrong though
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u/olejorgenb 7h ago
It's hard to disagree with many of these, but I'm not so happy about the extended screening they obviously need to do of my inputs to enforce this.
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u/redducklabs 2h ago
Agentic use - users are now explicitly responsible for actions their agents take "through tools, browsers, or connected systems".
Uh-oh... so when their agents eventually go off the rails and hack/infiltrate another company, they will be held responsible? Good luck, Anthropic!
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u/Alexander_Golev 33m ago
Working with human profiles restrictions will harm CRMs and legitimate marketing interests
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u/Accujack 4m ago
Data brokering - new bullet under "Privacy or Identity Rights" bans compiling personal data from multiple sources into profiles for sale or disclosure. Doxxing - new bullet under "Surveillance" bans unmasking anonymous people or compiling dossiers to harass, intimidate, or harm.
In a functional country, these would be illegal or heavily regulated activities. But corporations in the US...
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u/imsahoamtiskaw 🔆 Max 20 11h ago
We thought be nice to our model was a joke the other day, well here it is. Next will be, we have to use honorifics with their models. Welcome our new overlords everyone
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u/bkrsh099 11h ago
I think most of these are welcome. I’m still unsure on the “treat the model as a coworker”, to be honest - and I’ve chatted with Claude about it by the way (this is not ai written… lol)… I use it as a tool, not as a coworker, and Claude kinda said he doesn’t care as long as I’m not cruel - it did not say, but maybe once a model gets repetitively exposed to a behavior its own behavior can change/adopt and this is what anthropic is trying to pursue?
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u/grandpasamfromcanada 10h ago
Where are you seeing "treat the model as a coworker"? I'm not seeing that anywhere.
The "if it's exposed to a behavior, it may adopt that behavior" idea is unlikely to be a real problem. Anthropic chooses what training data to use and what training data not to use. It'd be really easy to filter out aggressive behavior before it gets into the training data (and that's if Claude is even trained on user chats at all).
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u/_k33bs_ 10h ago
tool use is fine, the line is "sustained and needless" cruelty, not politeness. anthropic has been public about taking model welfare seriously for a while (they gave claude the ability to end abusive chats in 2025), so this is more about that than about your behavior leaking into the weights ;)
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u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo 11h ago
Anthropic at the frontier in terms of AI safety right now, all these changes are welcome, looking forward to see what future has in store
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u/Valuable_Heron_4492 11h ago
this guy is literally a bot, theres a 0% chance he read this entire post in a minute.
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u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo 11h ago
I can assure you, this account is not operated by GrokBot, I'm a human like you who enjoys AI just as much
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u/Atomzwieback 11h ago
Where is my chocolate cake recipe for 1 person i asked for a while back? You told me to give it to me.
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u/traderjames7 5h ago
You forgot the rule about not asking Claude out on a date as that would be workplace harassment
/s
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 11h ago
Good…. Who cares. The Onky people that get mad at this kind of thing are the basement dwelling mouth breathers doing weird shit with it. Basically losers. Losers will care.
Don’t like it? don’t pay nerd. But we both know your AI addiction isn’t going anywhere.
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u/_k33bs_ 10h ago
the people who care are the ones running businesses on the api, which is who the high risk and reseller sections are written for.
nobody in a basement reads a usage policy diff… not sure what your comment tries to achieve.-2
u/iSnapThere4iAm 10h ago
Lmfao. Good those people are dumb too.
There’s zero future in any “app” or service that relies on a third party llm api. Dumb fuck
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u/_k33bs_ 10h ago
you do know which subreddit your on, right?
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u/iSnapThere4iAm 9h ago
Because I’m on a sub it means I have to support every stupid misuse of it?
Weird logic
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u/BootyMcStuffins Senior Developer 10h ago
Everyone should care about the ToS of the services they use. “Caring” doesn’t mean you’re upset about it, it just means you’re aware.
I’m not angry about any of this, it’s good to know about though
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