The invite-only audio-based social network Clubhouse has confirmed a data spill in which a user streamed private audio from a chatroom to a third-party site.
As confirmed by the iPhone-only social media app to Bloomberg, the data spill saw a user violate the terms of Clubhouse's terms of service, rather than hack into the app to release private conversations into the wild. According to the report, the user could go into multiple chatrooms and share the chats with anyone on their website, all by connecting to the Clubhouse Application Programming Interface (API).
- What is Clubhouse and why is Facebook cloning the voice chat app?
- Check out the best messaging apps of 2021
- Best smartphones in 2021
Semi-private
The user has reportedly been banned by Clubhouse, but this raises concerns over just how private the app is. Especially as only a week ago, Clubhouse stated it was strengthening its security due to Stanford Internet Observatory researchers discovering its audio data could be accessed by the Chinese government (via Gizmodo). Well, that's concerning.
After the data spill and breach of terms of service, Clubhouse stated that it now has new "safeguards" so conversations won't be streamed again. However, it's not impossible to record what's being said in an audio-only chat app.
This isn't the first time audio has been streamed from the Clubhouse app for all to hear, as the famed Elon Musk interview has been uploaded to YouTube for anyone to listen to. So it's not exactly hard to find, either.
The social app reportedly has over 6 million registered users, with that number growing fast due to its rise in popularity thanks to Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. With this many users, it will be hard for a few conversations to not secretly be streamed on convenient platforms.
However, there's no denying its success despite it being an invite-only iPhone app. In fact, Facebook is looking to create its very own version of the app, although it's still in its early stages.
