The privacy issue at the clubhouse has gotten a little better

Clubhouse, the invitational chat app that enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity during the pandemic, received a privacy-friendly update. After many complaints about the aggressive pressure of the app to gain access to the users’ contacts, Clubhouse users can now invite their friends without opening their address book.

The update follows several reports on privacy issues with the app, which was particularly hungry for users’ contacts, forcing them to access the app if they wanted to invite others. (Currently, people can only join the app if they have an invitation.) But when users granted that access, they were encouraged to invite more of their contacts, telling how many of their contacts’ contacts were already in the app, and tell who was already logged in to their address book and tell when one of their contacts joined the app – while encouraging them to start a private room to welcome them.

This can be an excellent feature for people who want to see which of their friends are on the platform and want to connect with them. And this is an excellent feature for Clubhouse, which wants as many users as possible to spend as much time on the app as possible.

But it was not so good for users who, a few minutes after joining, were followed by people they did not want contact with at all – an abusive ex, or a creepy guy they met in a bar, or even the bar itself – which has been warned about their presence on the platform due to Clubhouse’s aggressive pressure to interconnect users. This also applies to people who have not even uploaded their own contacts. As long as the user has been in someone else’s contacts, the person will be alerted once the user has joined the app.

The update, released on March 12, addresses some but not all of the privacy issues. You can now invite your friends without giving the app access to it and trusting 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 in them, they will still get the alert that you have joined the app, whether you are uploading your contacts or not. There is no way to temporarily block a user while on board the process to prevent this, and blocking someone in Clubhouse does not prevent them from seeing your profile anyway.

Clubhouse did not immediately comment on why it made the change.

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

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