The Clubhouse privacy issue has improved a little

Clubhouse, the invite-only chat app that saw a meteoric rise in popularity during the pandemic, received an update geared to privacy. After 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 about privacy issues with the app, which mainly required users’ contacts, forcing them to grant access to the app if they wanted to invite others. (Currently, people can only sign in to the app if they have an invitation.) But when users granted that access, they were encouraged to invite more of their contacts, said how many contacts from their contacts were already in the app, said who in the calendar of them was already signed and informed when one of their contacts entered the app – all while encouraging them to open a private room to receive them.

This can be a great resource for people who want to see which of their friends are on the platform and connect with them. And it is a great resource for the Clubhouse, which wants as many users as possible to spend as much time in the app as possible.

But it was not so good for users who, minutes after entering, were followed by people with whom they did not want to have any contact – an abusive ex or a scary guy they met in a bar, or even in the bar itself – who were alerted to your presence on the platform through Clubhouse’s aggressive effort to connect its users to each other. This was also true for people who had not yet 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 signs in to the application.

The update, released on March 12, resolves some of these privacy issues, but not all. Now you can invite your friends without giving access to the app and without trusting it to your contacts, assuming your friends have an iPhone (the Clubhouse is still only iOS). But if someone else has loaded your contacts and your phone number is in them, they will still receive that alert that you have joined the application, whether you load your contacts or not. There is no way to preemptively block a user in the integration process to prevent this, and blocking someone at the Clubhouse does not prevent them from viewing your profile in any way.

The Clubhouse did not immediately comment when asked about the reason for the change.

So, if there is someone out there who has your contact information and you do not want to be notified of your presence in the app, the Clubhouse is still a club that you do not want to join.

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