Clubhouse may be leaking data to Chinese govt: Stanford report

New Delhi: 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.