Clubhouse, expert claim data breach reports false
PremiumThe reports emerged after several posts appeared on Telegram and the dark web, from a user claiming to sell contact information of over 3.8 billion people, saved in Clubhouse’s databases
Audio-only social platform Clubhouse has denied reports of a data leak after a user published posts on Telegram and the dark web claiming to sell contact information of more than 3.8 billion people saved in the databases of Clubhouse. The user noted that the platform has access to its users’ contact books “in real time", which means its databases are updated with new contact information whenever its users make additions to their contact lists.
The platform said it does access its users’ contact lists, but added that there was no breach of data. “There are a series of bots generating billions of random phone numbers. In the event that one of these random numbers happens to exist on our platform because of mathematical coincidence, Clubhouse’s API returns no user-identifiable information. Privacy and security are of utmost importance to Clubhouse and we keep investing in industry-leading security practices," the company said.
Security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia, who has unearthed such leaks in the past, noted that personally identifiable information of users was not available in the data being sold. The Telegram group where the data appeared was the same one that sold a fake WhatsApp database of 470 million users in the past, Rajaharia said. “Now they changed the name of the group from WhatsApp Database Leak to Clubhouse Database Leak," he noted. The seller in question had a “bad past", he said.
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