The Clubhouse app and its exclusive service are increasingly being criticized in terms of data security. There are currently 1,3 million user data in a hacker forum and the app operators are not even shocked, as they themselves explain on Twitter.
The portal cybernews.com currently reported that over 1,3 million records of clubhouse users have appeared in a hacker forum. And only days after data from more than a billion Facebook and LinkedIn profiles were offered for sale online. Now it's Clubhouse's turn: An SQL database with 1,3 million Clubhouse user records was tapped via web scraping and published free of charge in a hacker forum.
What data was leaked?
The good news: "sensitive" information such as email addresses, phone numbers, or credit card information" is not included in the leaked database. Nonetheless, there is significant user-related information from Clubhouse profiles, including:
- Type of user identification
- Name
- Photo url
- Username
- Twitter info
- Instagram info
- Number of followers
- Number of people the user is following
- Account creation date
- Invited by the name of the user profile
Clubhouse posted a statement on the incident on social media (Twitter link) stating that no system violation has occurred. The company said the data is already publicly available and that "anyone" can access it through its API.
Anyone can carry out bulk queries of user data via the Clubhouse API
The social media statement sparked heated debate about the company's stance on the privacy of its users when everyone can collect and download profile information on a large scale. According to Mantas Sasnauskas, Senior Information Security Researcher at CyberNews, the release of tapped clubhouse user data reveals a potential privacy problem within the social media platform itself.
More at CyberNews.com