Clubhouse Criticized Over User Privacy Policies (vox.com) 25
How does the trendy new audio-chatroom app Clubhouse handle user privacy? Recode reports:
What if you didn't give Clubhouse access to your contacts, specifically because you didn't want all or any of them to know you were there? I regret to inform you that Clubhouse has made it possible for them to know anyway, encourages them to follow you, and there isn't much you can do about it. When I joined, I didn't give Clubhouse access to my contacts; as has been my policy since childhood, only I may decide who enters my clubhouse. Nevertheless, a few minutes later, I had a bunch of followers from my contacts. Even worse: I got followers who weren't in my contacts at all — but I was in theirs.
It turns out that your privacy on Clubhouse depends not just on what you do but also on what those who have your information in their contacts do. For now, you can only get invited to Clubhouse through your phone number, which is attached to your account and can't be removed. So if someone has your phone number in their contacts, and they've given Clubhouse access to those contacts, they'll get a notification when you join the app and a recommendation to follow you...
It's not clear why Clubhouse doesn't have better options for users to manage their privacy or more information for users about how their data might be used or linked to them. The company is reportedly operating with a small staff, but it also has millions of users and millions of dollars worth of funding from major Silicon Valley venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, and a valuation of $1 billion. It's not the first well-funded social media app to push the boundaries of data privacy. But you'd at least think Clubhouse would have learned from the unicorns that came before it.
It turns out that your privacy on Clubhouse depends not just on what you do but also on what those who have your information in their contacts do. For now, you can only get invited to Clubhouse through your phone number, which is attached to your account and can't be removed. So if someone has your phone number in their contacts, and they've given Clubhouse access to those contacts, they'll get a notification when you join the app and a recommendation to follow you...
It's not clear why Clubhouse doesn't have better options for users to manage their privacy or more information for users about how their data might be used or linked to them. The company is reportedly operating with a small staff, but it also has millions of users and millions of dollars worth of funding from major Silicon Valley venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, and a valuation of $1 billion. It's not the first well-funded social media app to push the boundaries of data privacy. But you'd at least think Clubhouse would have learned from the unicorns that came before it.
A common problem (Score:4, Insightful)
They're hardly the only messaging app which is quick to advertise how seriously they take the privacy of your messages but think nothing of uploading your entire contact list to their servers and sending a push message to all of them already on the service to tell them you've joined.
Looking at you Signal and Telegram...
Re: A common problem (Score:2)
Signal does NOT upload your contacts
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Does-Signal-send-my-number-to-my-contacts-
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It just tells *everyone* that you've joined and if you're in someone else's contacts, it pops up your name for them.
Telling everyone is still bad. This is literally what this article is about.
Re: (Score:2)
Please read up how it actually works.
It does not tell everyone that you're joined. Only if one of your contacts joined on Signal, Signal can now start encrypting chats to them, so if you previously texted, using Signal, there will be a message in the chat with them, that they've now joined Signal.
If they are in your contacts, you already know their phone number. So telling you they use signal, and them that you use signal if they know your phone number, is problematic why exactly?
And how else would Signal e
Re: (Score:1)
Can you learn to read please?
Signal periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers for contact discovery. Names are never transmitted, and the information is not stored on the servers. The server responds with the contacts that are Signal users
This means that your phone is constantly sending them hashed versions of your contacts phone numbers, looking for a matching hash, thereby correlating your phone number and their phone number. At that exact juncture, they know that you're (a phone number & IP contacting their server, possibly with a still open connection) the one doing the looking, you're interested in a set of hashes, and those hashes are stored on their server--because they MUST be in order to compare them
Re: A common problem (Score:3)
They take all your contacts, they tell everyone that you've joined and they can contact you, which is exactly what the article is complaining about.
The fact they do it in a cryptographically secure way does mean they haven't got your contact list stored on their servers for someone else to steal is good, but the shitty user experience of "hey we just messaged all your contacts for you" is still shitty.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even cryptographically "secure". Phone numbers have 33 bits of entropy, max. State of the art hardware can crack that in a second.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, imagine their hashed database of phone numbers gets leaked. Or I just reconstruct their DB by adding sequential or interesting phone numbers of people to my contacts, and then Signal will notify me if any of them are in their hash database.
It suffers the same vulnerabilities as passwd hashes.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, Signal is in the process of completely freeing user accounts from phone numbers. So in the near future, you will be able to not give any phone number at all. (The underlying protocol is XMPP with a extension that inspired OMEMO, an a special "double ratchet" encryption mechanism around it. So an e-mail-address-like format [that isn't necessarily also an existing e-mail address] is the natural user ID format.)
They just started out with phone numbers, because it was originally meant to replace texting,
They did learn.. (Score:4, Informative)
But you'd at least think Clubhouse would have learned from the unicorns that came before it.
But they did learn! They learned that acquiring more users and moving metrics in the direction investors like to see at any costs is how you become a unicorn.
They only care about privacy in as much as it might block their growth or pose a risk to the business. The primary concern is pumping the numbers and doing anything they can get away with to get more market share, more investment, and eventually bring the early investors and founders a handsome payout.
Re: (Score:2)
How many drugs are venture capitalists taking, if they confuse a large bong cloud that looks like a rhinoceros from hell for a unicorn? ;)
They just noticed this? (Score:2)
Facebook has been doing this since forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone has.
If you are not on their service then try sending them a GDPR subject data access request, see if they have your data anyway. Then send them a notice to stop processing it and never do so in the future, see how they handle that.
Re: (Score:2)
A notice? No, at that point they're up for a nice fat lawsuit from EU regulators. That notice will come in a court envelope.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, and actually: SJW, n: A bully who acts like he's the poor poor victim, because that allows him to use white knights in an amplification attack. Usually just playing the proxy "for" some poor poor victim, that itself didn't think it was mistreated, and is therefore called "brainwashed". Most successful form of bullying since ~2004.
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't Aurora Feint [wikipedia.org] one of the first apps to do this nonsense?
Wrong issue (Score:2)
If you donâ(TM)t give permission to share your contacts, the OS should make sure they donâ(TM)t get access.
On a second note, if you truly want to join anonymously, create another email account. Just because you donâ(TM)t share contacts doesnâ(TM)t mean your accounts were already matched against other information.
I know on Android the permission systems arenâ(TM)t great, so choose a privacy-aware OS.
Re: (Score:3)
Do you know how we can tell you didn't read the fine summary, which specifically says the problem is that you have to give them your phone number (not email address, so much harder to do with throwaway contact info), and they look it up in the contact list from everyone who did let them see their contacts?
The problem is not that Clubhouse is somehow sneaking looks at your contact list after you say no -- it has nothing to do with YOUR phone's operating system or its privacy implementation. It's that they a
WTF is "Clubhouse"? (Score:2)
I only read about it in advertisements disguised as news, such as this one.
Nobody in the real world ever mentioned it.
What exactly is the thing people say people flock to it for? Despite people not actually flocking to it, I presume, and this "report" of somebody lying that people flock to it being the only reason they check it out in the first place.
Because I'm *not* going to contribute to yet another Flappy Bird, by checking it out or telling everyone.
Use Signal. Use Jitsi Meet. Use PGP. Fuck the rest.
Re: (Score:2)
The summary says "trendy new audio-chatroom app". Just what the world needed! I'll check it out right away...
Called it Clubhouse (Score:2)
Shocked, *shocked* at privacy breaches (Score:2)
David Gerard got it right a decade ago: [slashdot.org]
The Myth (Score:1)
It is just a matter of time. Privacy on the internet is just a myth. https://cyberflixtvappdownload... [cyberflixt...wnload.com]