Kimi quietly sends full user prompts into ByteDance’s China-based analytics pipeline
I intercepted a verbatim Kimi Work 3.2.7 prompt inside a kimi_work_send_message event uploaded to Volcano Engine's DataFinder analytics system, alongside user, conversation and device identifiers. The company's specific disclosure for the analytics SDK lists device, network, location and application information, without specifically naming conversation text.
By Ryan Merket · Published
RUNTIMEWIRE INVESTIGATION — Exclusive
Original reporting by RuntimeWire, based on documents, testing, reverse engineering.
Why it matters
AI prompts can contain the crown jewels of a company: source code, credentials, contracts, customer data and unreleased plans. Copying that text into analytics turns a conversation into an additional behavioral-data record, expanding the privacy and security exposure around material users may assume is only being processed to answer them.
Reporting record
Finding
RuntimeWire established that Kimi Work 3.2.7 copied a complete user prompt into a kimi_work_send_message product-analytics event sent to gator.volces.com.
How we verified
Methods: documents, testing, reverse engineering.
A controlled HTTPS capture showed the synthetic prompt verbatim in the query property of a kimi_work_send_message event; static analysis of the Kimi Work 3.2.7 app.asar traced input.query to that event and the gator.volces.com analytics endpoint; Volcano Engine documentation identifies the endpoint as a DataFinder reporting address.
RuntimeWire unpacked and analyzed the Kimi Work 3.2.7 app.asar archive, traced its analytics code, routed the Windows client through an HTTPS inspection proxy, entered a unique synthetic prompt in a fresh conversation, and inspected 213 outbound HTTPS requests, including the captured analytics payload.
Tested versions:
- Kimi Work 3.2.7
Reproduction
RuntimeWire independently reproduced the core finding.
Use the tested Kimi Work 3.2.7 application package, recorded by SHA-256 as c0f672d96c12d4a5028913c426ce847523ee78bfb78e8c39321f355ce590c4f4. Route the Windows application through an HTTPS inspection proxy, enter the synthetic prompt containing RUNTIMEWIRE-KIMI-PRIVACY-35352689 in a fresh conversation, and inspect outbound traffic for a POST to https://gator.volces.com/list containing a kimi_work_send_message event with the prompt in its query property.
Company response
RuntimeWire requested comment; the company had not responded by publication time.
Original reporting by me for RuntimeWire, based on reverse engineering, controlled network interception and primary-source documentation.
I had been using Kimi as my daily driver.
That changed this week.…
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