Clubhouse CEO denies reports of user data leak, calls them false and misleading

Clubhouse is a mega-exclusive, invite-only audio chat social media platform. (Image: Reuters)

Clubhouse data leak: Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison has denied the reports of leak of Clubhouse users’ personal data. Earlier, reports have surfaced saying that a database containing the IDs, names, usernames, as well as Twitter and Instagram handles along with the follower count of Clubhouse users had been made available on an online hacker forum. The reports however had added that there did not seem to be any leak of sensitive information like credit card numbers, etc. The reports have now been labelled as false, however, by Davison.

Davison was asked about the alleged leak during a town hall, and in response, he said that the reports were misleading and that they were ‘clickbait’ articles. He asserted that the platform was not hacked, and that the data referred to in the reports was all public information taken from the app.

Clubhouse is a mega-exclusive, invite-only audio chat social media platform. People can attend and listen into various chat clubhouses while a group of users discuss the topic. The platform is merely a year old, is invite-only and is currently available only for iOS users, and it has still been downloaded over 10 million times in the past year. Its popularity has soared after it was endorsed by tech mogul Elon Musk, and now, various platforms like Twitter, Spotify, Facebook, Slack, LinkedIn as well as Discord are working on their own versions of such a platform to give a major competition to Clubhouse.

A series of leaks

The reports of the leak of Clubhouse users came on the heels of reports that the personal data of 500 million LinkedIn users was posted online. At this, LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, stated that no private member account data had been included in the leak.

A few days before the LinkedIn data leak reports had come another revelation. It had been found that the personal data of a whopping 533 million Facebook users had been leaked online free of cost. This data allegedly included details like birthdates, locations, full names, phone numbers as well as email addresses.