Clubhouse to take action against data breach

The social network announces this a week after researchers at Stanford University's Internet Observatory showed that the Chinese government can access the platform's user data.

Audio social network Clubhouse has vowed to put safeguards in place to prevent data breaches, after taking action this weekend against an external site that allowed access to the platform's conversations.

Clubhouse has "permanently blocked" a user from the platform this weekend accused of creating an external website that allowed access to multiple rooms on the platform.

It claims to have taken "safeguards" to prevent further leaks of its users' audio, although it has not disclosed the measures.

The decision comes a week after researchers at Stanford University's Internet Observatory showed that the Chinese government could access Clubhouse user data, including raw audio material, due to the app's data protection practices.

Clubhouse uses Agora, a US-Chinese provider of real-time voice and video engagement software, as its supporting infrastructure. In addition, metadata such as a user's identifier and the rooms they join are sent in plain text over the internet, unencrypted, so that anyone with access to a user's network traffic can see them.

The social network said in a statement at the time that it was implementing changes to add additional encryption and blocking to prevent Clubhouse clients from transmitting IP addresses with user data to Chinese servers.