The clubhouse privacy issue has improved a bit

Clubhouse, the invitation-only chat app that has skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, has gotten a privacy-friendly update. Following numerous complaints about the app’s aggressive pressure to access its users’ contacts, Clubhouse now allows users to invite their friends without having to open their address book.

The update follows several reports of privacy issues with the app, which was particularly greedy for users’ contact, forcing them to give access to the app if they wanted to invite others. (Currently, users can only join the app if they have an invite.) But when users granted this access, they were encouraged to invite more of their contacts, they indicated how many contacts of their contacts were already on the application, their address book was already registered and notified when one of their contacts joined the application – while encouraging them to open a private room to welcome them.

This could be a great feature for people who want to see which of their friends are on the platform and connect with them. And that’s a great feature for Clubhouse, which wants as many users as possible to spend as much time on the app as possible.

But that wasn’t that great for the users who, within minutes of signing up, were being followed by people they didn’t want to have contact with – an abusive ex, or a scary guy they met at a bar. , or even at the bar. itself – who were alerted to their presence on the platform thanks to aggressive pressure from Clubhouse to connect its users with each other. This was also true for people who hadn’t even uploaded their own contacts. As long as the user was in someone else’s contacts, that person would be alerted as soon as the user joined the app.

The update, released on March 12, fixes some of these privacy issues, but not all. You can now invite your friends without giving access to the app and trust it with your contacts, assuming your friends have an iPhone (Clubhouse is still iOS only). But if someone else has uploaded their contacts and your phone number is there, they will still get this alert that you have joined the app whether you download your contacts or not. There is no way to preemptively block a user in the onboarding process to avoid this, and blocking someone on Clubhouse does not prevent them from seeing your profile anyway.

Clubhouse did not immediately comment when asked why he made the change.

So if there is someone who has your details and you don’t want to be notified of your presence on the app, Clubhouse is still a club you don’t want to join.

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