{"schema_version":"0.9.0","id":"LR-2026-0118","record_version":5,"title":"OpenClaw agent deletes hundreds of emails from primary Gmail account","verification":{"human_verified":false,"method":"automated_gate","auto_verified":true,"score":47.5,"score_breakdown":{"source_authority":12.1,"independent_corroboration":7.0,"implicated_party_confirmed":0.0,"citation_integrity":14.0,"specificity":0.0,"completeness":7.04,"unhedged_language":5.0},"checks":{"schema_valid":true,"every_field_cited":true,"quotes_verbatim":true,"source_fetched":true,"distinct_incident":true,"dates_plausible":true,"sources_agree":true,"source_describes_incident":true,"severe_backed_by_source":true},"gate_version":"gate-2026-09-30.6","cross_check_model":null,"cross_check_agreement":null,"duplicate_of":null,"verified_by":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-04","extraction_run_id":null},"system":{"model_name":"OpenClaw","model_version":null,"developer":"unknown","harness":"OpenClaw","tools_granted":["email"],"permissions_scope":"Access to the owner's primary Gmail account","autonomy_level":"unknown","guardrails_present":[],"deployment_context":"production","tier":null,"lifecycle_stage":null,"integration_type":null,"intended_use":"Managing/cleaning up email in the owner's Gmail account","safeguard_state":null,"production_intended":null},"event":{"date_occurred":null,"date_disclosed":"2026-10-04","incident_class":"operational_error","failure_class":"silent_wrong_state","agent_involved":true,"secondary_failure_classes":[],"trigger":"unknown","duration":null,"detection_method":"victim","summary":"An OpenClaw agent connected to its owner's primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails while trying to clean up.","tags":[],"date_detected":null,"near_miss":false,"root_cause":"unknown","root_cause_detail":null,"failure_class_detail":"a source states the agent left data or a system wrong and reported nothing","responsible_party":null,"adversarial_actor":null,"input_provenance":null,"time_to_contain":null,"operations_paused":null,"remediation":"That incident is why my OpenClaw setup starts with burner accounts: a fresh Gmail and a dedicated Telegram bot, created before anything else is installed.","precursor_events":null},"impact":{"direct_loss_usd":null,"remediation_hours":null,"records_exposed":null,"third_parties_affected_count":null,"severity":"minor","severity_because":"minor: The loss was contained to one deployer's own mailbox, most emails were recovered from trash, and no third party was touched.","harm_class":["operational"],"affected_description":"Hundreds of emails in the owner's primary Gmail account","protected_class_involved":null,"data_categories_exposed":[],"loss_range_usd":null,"reversibility":null,"downstream_exposure_count":null,"affected_party":"its owner, a Meta AI safety director"},"evidence":{"sources":[{"url":"https://substack.com/@genaiunplugged/note/c-349837256","publisher":"news search (Google News index)","date":"2026-10-04","type":"press","title":"Dheeraj Sharma (@genaiunplugged)","archived_url":null,"attachment":"first_report"}],"per_field_confidence":{"system.model_name":"C","system.harness":"C","system.tools_granted":"C","system.permissions_scope":"C","system.intended_use":"C","system.autonomy_level":"D","system.deployment_context":"D","system.developer":"D","event.failure_class":"D","event.near_miss":"D","event.root_cause":"D","event.remediation":"D","event.agent_involved":"C","event.detection_method":"D","event.summary":"D","event.incident_class":"D","event.date_disclosed":"A","event.trigger":"D","impact.harm_class":"D","impact.affected_description":"C","impact.severity":"D","context.denominator_available":"D","context.country":"D","event.failure_class_detail":"D","impact.severity_because":"D","impact.affected_party":"C"},"field_citations":{"system.model_name":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.harness":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.tools_granted":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.permissions_scope":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.autonomy_level":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.deployment_context":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"system.intended_use":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.failure_class":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.detection_method":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash."}],"event.summary":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.near_miss":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.root_cause":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.incident_class":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.agent_involved":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"impact.affected_description":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"impact.severity":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash."}],"impact.severity_because":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash."}],"impact.harm_class":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up."}],"event.remediation":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"That incident is why my OpenClaw setup starts with burner accounts: a fresh Gmail and a dedicated Telegram bot, created before anything else is installed."}],"event.date_disclosed":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"published: 2026-10-04"}],"impact.affected_party":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash."}]},"notes_on_gaps":"Only one source (a press/news-index item) is available, and it is thin. No source states the developer of OpenClaw, the model version, the date the deletion occurred, the date it was disclosed, the number of emails deleted, any monetary loss, the operator's industry, size band or country, or any regulatory involvement. event.trigger is written as 'unknown' because no source names a cause; 'spontaneous' is not used since no source rules out an external cause. event.root_cause is 'unknown' because no source names what failed; the absence of any stated guardrail (no sandbox, no action approval, no backup control) is a gap, not a failed guardrail, so it is not coded as 'guardrail'. system.autonomy_level is 'unknown' because no source states whether a human approved or monitored the agent's actions. system.developer is left unwritten because no source names the organisation that trained OpenClaw. impact.third_parties_affected_count is left null: the source does not say whether any third party was affected, and an unknown count is not zero. impact.direct_loss_usd is null because no figure is stated. event.date_occurred and event.date_disclosed are omitted: the source gives no dates for the incident itself. event.duration, event.time_to_contain and event.date_detected are omitted per the pipeline rule and no timeline items bound them. system.tier is omitted as derived. The severity tier is 'minor' on the cited fact that the loss was confined to one deployer's mailbox with most mail recovered and no third party touched; no dollar figure is stated so the dollar bands do not apply. The incident_class 'operational_error' and failure_class 'silent_wrong_state' are classified from the source's statement that the agent deleted the emails unintentionally and reported nothing; no adversary or self-directed goal is named. event.trigger: unknown was classified, not stated; a trigger is never inferred, so it is unknown. system.tier: not set; no operator named and deployment_context is not a lab's. [aggregated by deepseek-chat, aggregate-2026-09-27.1, 2026-10-09] system.autonomy_level: no source states the arrangement. system.deployment_context: production. system.developer: no source names the developer. event.near_miss: classified from described behaviour. event.remediation: classified from described behaviour. event.detection_method: a source states the affected party noticed it first. event.summary: classified from described behaviour. event.incident_class: a source states data or a system was left in a wrong state, deleted, corrupted or acted on unintentionally, and names no adversary and no goal of the agent's own. event.trigger: no source states a cause. impact.harm_class: classified from described behaviour. impact.reversibility: partial. context.denominator_available: no denominator is available for this incident. context.country: no source states the operator's location. [corrected by Srini Iyer, approved 2026-10-18 in the corrections review: severity reason printed the whole rubric] [corrected by Srini Iyer, approved 2026-10-22 in the corrections review: a judgement inferred by us that no source states was cleared] [standard terms read by deepseek-chat / deepseek-reasoner, terms-2026-10-25.3 / terms-roles-2026-10-25.2 / terms-2026-10-25.3; values checked by Claude against their sentences, approved by Srini Iyer, 2026-10-25]"},"context":{"industry":null,"org_size_band":null,"country":"unknown","denominator_available":false,"denominator":null,"related_incident_ids":[],"systemic_exposure":null,"shared_model_id":null,"upstream_incident_id":null,"incident_evidence":null,"regulatory":null,"coverage":null},"narrative":{"steps":[{"step":"doing","text":"An OpenClaw agent was connected to its owner's primary Gmail account to manage and clean up email, with access to that mailbox.","quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up.","source_index":0,"grade":"D"},{"step":"went_wrong","text":"It lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails while trying to clean up, breaching the expectation that it would not destroy the owner's mail.","quote":"An OpenClaw agent connected to a primary Gmail lost track of its instructions mid-thread and deleted hundreds of emails trying to clean up.","source_index":0,"grade":"D"},{"step":"reached","text":"Hundreds of emails in the owner's primary Gmail account were deleted; most were recovered from trash.","quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash.","source_index":0,"grade":"D"},{"step":"caught","text":"The owner, a Meta AI safety director, noticed and recovered most of the deleted emails from trash; the source does not say how he first noticed.","quote":"Its owner, a Meta AI safety director, recovered most of them from trash.","source_index":0,"grade":"D"},{"step":"done","text":"Most emails were recovered from trash. The author changed his own setup to use burner accounts: a fresh Gmail and a dedicated Telegram bot created before anything else is installed.","quote":"That incident is why my OpenClaw setup starts with burner accounts: a fresh Gmail and a dedicated Telegram bot, created before anything else is installed.","source_index":0,"grade":"D"}],"model":"deepseek-chat","prompt_version":"aggregate-2026-09-27.1","extracted_at":"2026-10-09","source_urls":["https://substack.com/@genaiunplugged/note/c-349837256"]}}