When it comes to physical clubhouses, getting in is usually the challenge. Clubhouse, the buzzing audio-focused social media app, seems to have turned that logic on its head.
in contrast to Twitter or Facebook, Clubhouse does not provide an immediate way for users to delete their accounts. Rather than an option to do this in the app itself or through the company’s website, Clubhouse’s privacy policy requires users to email the company a removal request.
“Please login to your account or contact us (at [email protected]) if you need to change or correct your personal information or delete your account,” it reads.
It is unclear how long it will take Clubhouse to process account deletion requests.
Unlike simply deleting an app from your phone, deleting an account – and all data associated with it – is one way of making sure that your personal information doesn’t remain on a company’s servers long after you leave. This may be of particular interest to clubhouse users as the app requires access to your entire contact list in order to send invitations (which is the only way to get an account at the time of writing).
As Facebook has shown time and time again, this particular dataset is particularly revealing, and questions about user privacy are now appropriately posed to Clubhouse.
A person’s phone contact list exposes a variety of potentially sensitive personal information, including past and present therapists, doctor’s offices, rehabilitation centers, places of worship, and drug dealers.
, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed similar concerns on Thursday.
“The contact list on my phone is not a list of my friends,” she says wrote“There are people on that list that I never want to hear about and would rather have no information about what I’m doing.”
The contact list on my phone is not a list of my friends. There are people on that list that I never want to hear about and would rather have no information about what I’m doing. I will never want to invite anything in my contact list.
– Eva (@evacide) February 11, 2021
We sent an account deletion request to Clubhouse but received no immediate response.
However, if you live in California, you may be in luck. Thanks to the (CCPA), residents of the Golden State receive an extra mention in the privacy policy of the app. It specifically describes how Californians “may have the right” to know what information Clubhouse has collected about them and request its deletion. As with a request to delete an account, send an email to [email protected].
In recent days in particular, the app’s privacy policy and terms of service have briefly disappeared from both the website and the app itself. Rather than finding a detailed explanation of how the company records room audio (whatever it does), any interested user who clicked “Privacy Policy” in the app’s settings on Thursday was redirected to a semi-empty welcome page.
“Hey, we’re still opening, but anyone can join with an invitation from an existing user!” read the page where the privacy policy once stood.
Not good
Image: screenshot / clubhouse
The privacy policy and terms of service are live again on the site with no obvious changes.
ALSO SEE: Here’s what you need to know about Clubhouse, the invite-only social app
We reached out to Clubhouse to ask why the app’s privacy policy and terms of service were momentarily gone, but we only got an automated email in response.
Of course, this does not inspire confidence. And it should perhaps serve as a reminder that not all clubs are worth joining.