3.8 Billion User Phone Number Leaked On Dark Web, This Is Clubhouse's Response!

The Clubhouse user database has been sold on the dark web. (photo: Marc Ruef via Twitter)

JAKARTA - The Clubhouse audio social media, which once dominated popular applications, is now reported to be experiencing user data breach issues. Whereas the platform was previously far from controversial news.

However, the Clubhouse, which is now open to everyone without an invitation, allegedly suffered its first data breach. The report was first revealed by security researcher Marc Ruef on his official Twitter account.

Ruef claims to see Clubhouse's user database has been sold on the dark web. This database contains 3.8 billion phone numbers allegedly belonging to users of the app. However, this data is still a big question, because Clubhouse is a relatively new application, and how can it have 3.8 billion users in its database?

In fact, when a user joins a Clubhouse, the app asks for permission to browse through the user's contacts to find friends who may have joined the app.

According to the database seller, the scans the app performs appear to save the numbers to the Clubhouse's secret database. This means that even if someone doesn't use Clubhouse, there's a good chance that their number could be part of this database.

Hearing this, Clubhouse did not remain silent. The audio chat company has denied all the allegations regarding their first data breach.

Full phone number database of #Clubhouse is up for sale on the #Darknet. It contains 3.8 billion phone numbers. These are not just members but also people in contact lists that were synced. Chances are high that you are listed even if you haven't had a Clubhouse login. pic.twitter.com/PfAkUJ0BL5

— Marc Ruef (@mruef) July 23, 2021

"There is no violation of Clubhouse. There is a series of bots that generate billions of random phone numbers. If any of these random numbers are on our platform by mathematical coincidence, the Clubhouse API does not return any user-identifiable information," said Clubhouse as quoted by Ubergizmo, Wednesday 28 July.

"Privacy and security are very important to Clubhouse and we continue to invest in industry leading security practices."