Clubhouse may be leaking user data to Chinese govt, says Stanford report
As invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse becomes
popular globally including in India, researchers at Stanford University in the
US have warned that the app may be leaking users' audio data to the Chinese
government.
The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) has confirmed that Agora,
a Shanghai-based provider of real-time engagement software, supplies back-end
infrastructure to the Clubhouse app.
"The SIO has determined that a user's unique Clubhouse ID number
and chatroom ID are transmitted in plaintext, and Agora would likely have
access to users' raw audio, potentially providing access to the Chinese
government," the researchers said in a blog post.
The users' metadata is sent over the internet in plaintext (not
encrypted), meaning that any third-party with access to a user's network
traffic can access it.
"In this manner, an eavesdropper might learn whether two
users are talking to each other, for instance, by detecting whether those users
are joining the same channel," the researchers warned.
In at least one instance, SIO observed room metadata being relayed
to servers we believe to be hosted in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and
audio to servers managed by Chinese entities and distributed around the world
via Anycast (a wireless display receiver).
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