Clubhouse is recording conversations, stealing your data and breaching privacy in many ways, all of this is done without notifying the user.
The clubhouse is seeing huge success, especially during this pandemic. As people are looking for new places to find entertainment, Clubhouse is a perfect place for them to find influencers on the platform.
To join the Clubhouse, you must need an invite from someone who is already a member of the app.
1. Vulnerability
But the real vulnerability comes when you have to give the app your phone number and access to your Phone’s contact numbers and messages.
By giving access to all of your contacts and messages, the app uploads the contact lists to its servers.
As the fight against data theft and breach of privacy is going strong, making companies focus more on creating more privacy-friendly apps rather than the ones which leach on your data for any purpose whatsoever.
But, some policies are not very privacy-friendly. These shady privacy options are very well hidden. To find out more about it, we reached Clubhouse a couple of times, but we never got any answer to our questions about how the app is using the data.
2. The App Is Secretly Recording Conversations
One of the Clubhouse app’s features that you can neither pause the ongoing conversation nor listen to it later. You have to come live if you want to listen to the full show, and this is what differentiates it from any other podcasts or any recorded sessions.
The clubhouse is indeed recording conversations, secretly! If we look at the app’s privacy policy, which explicitly accepts that the app is recording everything!
It makes sense if something bad happens in the chat, it can easily be caught. But what about the other conversation? where nothing bad is happening? And what are the criteria for it being deleted? None of it has been explained by the company.
3. A User Can’t Delete Information
If someone in your friendliest has created an account on the app, there is a higher probability that the clubhouse has your mobile number as the app requests full access to your contact list.
If your friends have connected their social media accounts, that will also allow the company to find your social media accounts by mapping your friend list and your contact number, and you cannot do anything about it; there is no request to delete such data.
4. You Can’t Delete Your Account
If you have an account, you have no control over it, and you just cannot delete it until you send a request email to “[email protected].”
5. Clubhouse Sharing Personal Information Without Notifying
If you look at the app’s privacy policy, you will find out that the clubhouse is created majorly for advertising purpose. While signing up, the app confirms that the company will share Personal Data with the affiliates.
But the app is not telling you about who and how it is using your personal information.
6. Clubhouse is Constantly Tracking You!
The clubhouse’s privacy policy admits that the platform is using pixels and cookies to track what you’re doing on the Clubhouse, including recording conversations that you do in your sessions.
This can also be found in the privacy policy;
The industry experts have speculated that the company is doing to find the spots where the users are interacting the most to place advertisements there in the future, and they’re actively tracking their users to find those advertising spots.
It is crystal clear that the Clubhouse is doing their best to monetize the ethe app, but their plan to do it is abusing their users’ privacy, which is unethical.