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Comment by mam3 | Hacker News Reader

Bilions ?? On clubhouse ?

Clubhouse does the classic “share your contacts with us to find your friends here” thing, but it sounds like they just upload your entire list into their database instead of doing anything remotely privacy aware. I’m mostly curious how much else they uploaded with the numbers - is this name + number + email etc? And if this dump is just numbers, do Clubhouse have the rest somewhere else?

According to the screenshot: All members plus every single number in each of their phone books.

Even if they had 10M users (which I doubt), at 100 contacts per user that's 1B contacts.

They forgot to "select distinct"?

It includes every users' contact list from their phone. So likely damn near everyone on the planet with a cell phone.

Are people really that stupid to give some mobile app company access to their contact list? On iPhone you have to explicitly give permission, I presume on Android as well. I find that hard to believe everyone is doing it.

Many apps will refuse to work if you don't allow access to your contacts, so people just give in and allow it.

Google is the biggest abuser in this area just grabbing all your contacts and linking them to your Google account once you add any Google account (like Gmail or Youtube) to your Android device.

I do not think you are allowed on the Apple App Store if you do that.

Maybe not for smaller apps but apps with large user bases are under different rules than the rest.

I work for a fairly large app and that certainly is not the case for us.

What are you talking about?

It's extremely annoying to add a number to Telegram without adding it as a contact first, and allowing Telegram access to the contact list.

Whats the point of that? You dont need to exchange phone numbers for telegram just the @username and only one side needs to know the others username.

And once you have a chat with someone both can share their own contact directly in the chat with 2 clicks and add it with 2 clicks as well.

(which is still rather useless because there is no real benefit from adding someone as contact. But I guess if you want to store number then this is easy)

You're thinking like a technically enlightened person -- if not an engineer -- who prioritizes efficiency and control.

You're not thinking like a "normie" goal-oriented user, who doesn't care about understanding the system, and for whom the shortest path to achieving their goal generally passes through saying "sure, whatever" to any requests the app makes.

Maybe read the message I replied to before making such a nonsensical reply that has absolute nothing to do with what I asked the person above.

I can't figure out how to message someone with their @username.

I press "New Message" and get these options: "New Group", "New Contact", "New Channel".

If I press "New Contact" it asks for permission to access my contacts. If I refuse, it goes back to the three options mentioned above.

I've tried to find it for years, and I just have the other person message me first.

You put the @username (the @ is optional) in the search field then click on the user and send a message. Once a message is send the chat will obviously stay in the chat list. Same for public groups/channels.

Alternatively you can share/click a link with the format t.me/username to skip the search part.

>Are people really that stupid to give some mobile app company access to their contact list?

Almost every social media startup in the last 15 years was bootstrapped this way.

Afaik WhatsApp (on Android at least) requires you giving access to your contacts. So roughly speaking a huge chunk, probably the majority, of smartphone users shared their contact list to at least one company, which strictly speaking might not even be legal in many cases.

After all that's how WhatsApp populates its contact list, it looks which users have each other's phone numbers. That way it doesn't need a user login and friend/contact requests, but in return you give up your privacy.

Not true. It'll work without, it's just very inconvenient.

Everyone doesn't have to. If one person with your number gives up their contact list, they have yours. I'd guess about 10-12% of the populace would have to cooperate.

That was what made Clubhouse so famous:

"After registering, the clubhouse app asks for access to your address book. This must be granted if you want to invite friends."

I have no idea how that went through the Apple checks

It must be granted to invite friends but you can deny it access and still use Clubhouse, just that until you grant access you can’t invite others.

Actually now that I look into it again, it looks like since the middle of March of this year it's even possible to invite others without sharing your phonebook.

https://www.blogher.com/social-media/clubhouse-invite-withou...

https://www.gizchina.com/2021/03/16/clubhouse-new-update-use...

I keep no contacts on my phone and gladly give that info away. I'm surprised people don't use multiple phones for privacy.

Most people don’t care about privacy.

Based on the popularity of WhatsApp, yes most people don't give it a second thought.

Yes, constantly.

Yes.

Yeah, not sure either. Suspecting it's some other Clubhouse, not the main (project planning) one (https://clubhouse.io).

It's the audio chat one: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/

Thanks, that makes more sense. :)

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