- There's a good chance
you've already heard about Clubhouse,
the exclusive invite-only app everyone's talking about.
Clubhouse is an audio-based iPhone app
that lets users enter into chat rooms, or "clubs,"
where they can listen in
or participate in engaging conversations
on a range of different topics.
Think about it as joining a Zoom meeting without video,
or being a part of a live podcast.
There's mixed reviews, with some people praising Clubhouse
for its networking opportunities,
while others are skeptical
of what the platform has to offer.
So, should you join Clubhouse?
As appealing as the latest social media app
on the block might seem,
there are a few privacy and security concerns
which you may want to consider before joining the app.
In order to join Clubhouse,
you need an invite from an existing user.
You can also download the app from the Apple Store,
but you'll be added to a wait list before you're accepted.
When you finally sign up,
the app asks for access to your contact list.
If you give the app permission,
it will show you who in your address book is on the app
and urge you to invite those who aren't.
And if you don't grant access,
you lose the privilege of sending out invites.
While this may seem harmless,
you may want to consider what information
you'll end up sharing with the app.
- By giving Clubhouse access to your contact list,
you are essentially letting a private company know
every person whom you've ever interacted with
or felt comfortable enough to exchange phone numbers.
In the aggregate, it means
that they know who your doctor is,
they know if you've done any volunteer work,
they potentially know what church or temple you attend,
they know if you have a drug dealer,
and these are things that, you know,
you might think are kind of harmless,
but when you really start to ponder the ramifications
you realize that they're not.
I spoke with a sex worker who explained
to me that contacts from her life,
old college friends, even family members,
were being prompted to follow her on Clubhouse.
The problem being that her Clubhouse account
was associated with her sex worker persona.
In other words, it was the name that she worked under.
So these are old friends or family members
that didn't necessarily know about her professional life,
and she intentionally kept that separate,
and, in effect, Clubhouse outed her professional life
to those people.
- There's so many different ways to monetize
personal information,
and taking someone's address book
is like the easiest way to do that.
There's some companies that don't do it this way.
Signal, for example, they create a one-way hash
of every individual
little bit of information in your contact list,
and then compares that hash against other hashes.
So, at no point does Signal know who's in your contact list
or even know how they're connected.
It can just connect you directly with people in there.
But I don't know to what extent that this company
has made those kinds of efforts to protect user privacy.
If I was to hazard a guess,
I would say that that's probably a secondary or tertiary
priority for them.
- Clubhouse claims that its rooms are temporary and
your conversations are wiped clean once you leave a room.
The only time they claim to record
and retain the audio in a room
is for the purpose of investigating any untoward incidents,
like claims of abuse.
- There is a deep security and privacy point
that you're talking about here.
And that's that there doesn't seem to be people
who are moderating these things in the moment,
they seem to do it after the fact,
and that means that they are storing this information
in order to do that moderation
instead of securing it the whole way.
What we prefer to see, in any kind
of communication set-up, is sort
of an end-to-end encryption,
where the company doesn't have access to it,
individuals who are outside of the group can't access it.
This is a little bit different
because it's sort of like mass communicating.
It's almost like a TV station
that only certain people can watch.
So I think it gets a little bit thornier
about how much privacy is being disclosed
in these sort of contexts.
- [Danica] On many occasions,
users have recorded room conversations
and uploaded it on other public platforms.
Early in 2021, a Clubhouse user was able to publicly stream
audio feeds from multiple rooms into a third party website.
- You go into these situations,
sort of with the understanding
that it's going to be a private, intimate affair
between you and however many celebrities
are in this weird Zoom call,
but that doesn't seem to be the case.
And so I think the company
and other people involved
really need to set that expectation,
that you really don't have those kinds
of rights to privacy in here,
and that people should know that
so that they can act accordingly.
You might not say some things or you might not share
a deeply personal story or personal information,
which you shouldn't do anyway.
But I think it's more of a transparency issue.
- Lastly, something as simple as deleting
your Clubhouse account can end up being a security concern.
- At present, Clubhouse does not offer
an easy in-app way to delete your account.
Now, what does this mean?
It means that, you know, unlike Facebook or Twitter,
which allows you to click,
you know, you may have to dig around, but it
allows you to find and choose an option to say,
"Delete my account."
Clubhouse doesn't do that.
Clubhouse requires that you send them an email,
which they may or may not promptly respond to.
Now, for someone like me,
this isn't a super big problem
because I'm just sort of curious
about the account deletion process.
But for people who find themselves unwillingly
outed on Clubhouse, this can have real consequences.
If all of a sudden you realize
you need to delete your account
because it reveals something about you,
or if you find that the app has exposed you
in a way that you weren't expecting,
being able to quickly delete your account is a safety issue.
- As of early 2021, Clubhouse has over 100 million users.
The app is still in beta,
and only available to iPhone users.
But as its base grows stronger,
it's yet to be seen how they will deal
with a lot of these issues that plague the platform.