Clubhouse chats suffer data breach, security concerns raised

According to Reema Bahnasy, a spokeswoman for Clubhouse, an unidentified user was able to stream feeds from the app’s multiple rooms into third-party websites.

The company has permanently banned this sort of action. However, the users still managed to develop new ‘safeguards’ to bypass the actions. The audio chatroom app had gained much flair over the past few months due to its exclusivity for iPhone users. Moreover, the app turned into a highly interesting ecosystem for entrepreneurs, technologists, and impact makers to connect with limited users on different topics. This had even escalated to companies and institutions.

However, due to numerous breaches occurring in the app, many concerns have been raised by its respective users. Stanford Internet Observatory, which was the first to publicly raise security concerns. Furthermore, Alex Stamos, Director of the SIO and Facebook’s former security chief said:
“Clubhouse cannot provide any privacy promises for conversations held anywhere around the world.”

Moreover, Alex further confirmed that most of the back-end operations are overseen by a Shanghai-based startup called Agora Inc. while the remaining of the user experience is overseen by Clubhouse. This includes adding new friends and finding rooms.

Due to the back-end dependency of Clubhouse on Agora, it has become clear that the data and user privacy concerns have escalated beyond the perspective of surveillance. Users are concerned that their data might have been manipulated further as a result of these breaches as cybersecurity experts noticed that audio and metadata were being pulled from the Clubhouse app to other websites.