With the Houseparty app gaining traction lately, its privacy policies and the app's behaviour have come under scrutiny by many. Various users are reporting that the Houseparty app on their phones is hacking their social media accounts and stealing their personal data, including banking details.
Similar tweets have popped up from users claiming that their Netflix, Instagram, Snapchat, and Spotify accounts are getting hacked after they installed Houseparty.
People have also received emails saying their Spotify or Apple accounts are being accessed by someone else. The email from Spotify also states that the account was accessed from Russia.
The Houseparty team quickly took to Twitter to dismiss the rumours and issued a statement saying their app was not hacking into people’s devices.
In another tweet, Houseparty also said that it is investigating the hacking rumours that are likely spread by someone trying to sabotage the app’s growth. It is offering a $1 million bounty for proof that this was a smear campaign.
The app’s owner, Epic Games, also denied the claims and told The Sun that they have “found no evidence to suggest a link between Houseparty and the compromises of other unrelated accounts.”
“As a general rule, we suggest all users choose strong passwords when creating online accounts on any platform. Use a unique password for each account, and use a password generator or password manager to keep track of passwords, rather than using passwords that are short and simple,” added the spokesperson.
What’s strange here is that people are also complaining that Houseparty is trying to access their banking details and payment apps like PayPal.
This raises questions over the validity of the hacking claims since Houseparty does not request users for payment information, and therefore, has no permissions to access these details on users’ devices.
While there isn't any evidence to prove otherwise at the moment, it is quite likely that some users are placing blame on Houseparty for a breach that could be because of some other application on their phones.
However, there are concerns with Houseparty’s privacy policy. For starters, the company has not updated its privacy policy since June 2018, which is over a year and nine months ago.
Some users on Twitter also pointed out that Epic Games makes over 100 apps and games for iOS and is a multi-million dollar company as a way of providing them with enough credibility to dismiss these rumours.
However, it must also be known that Epic Games does not fare well with privacy ratings. An open-source website PrivacySpy gives Epic a rating of only 2.3 out of a possible 10 for its privacy policies.
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