5 Things you have to know about houseparty yes or yes before using it

Much has been said about Houseparty's security in recent days. The video conferencing application reportedly suffered a global hack in which personal information was obtained from tens of thousands of users. Subsequently, the company denied the allegations and claimed that it was a takedown campaign by competing companies. But what truth is there in all this? We have compiled several of the most important points of the messaging application that should be considered before using Houseparty on mobile.

Houseparty has not been proven to have been hacked

So is. Despite the fact that dozens of users have reported on social networks the theft of accounts of various Internet services associated with the same email used in Houseparty, the company has declared that it is nothing more than a discrediting campaign by other companies. And, in fact, there is no truthful evidence that shows that the application has been hacked.

From the official Houseparty account, they even encourage to present evidence of said campaign through a reward of no less than 1 million dollars. At the time of this writing, no credible evidence has been presented, either of discrediting campaigns or of attacks on the application's servers.

The company behind Houseparty is…

Life On Air Inc. This company, based in San Francisco, was acquired just a year ago by Epic Games, the company in charge of the development of Fortnite. Currently Life On Air acts as a subsidiary company of the latter. In fact, the Houseparty privacy policy shares a large percentage of the content of the policies of Epic Games, and therefore, Fortnite.

Houseparty is safe (but not much)

Perhaps the most recurrent question about Houseparty has to do precisely with its safety. Although the application is advertised as safe, the truth is that the methods used by the company to protect user information are not known.

Specifically, the official website of Houseparty.com reads the following:

Recently the company has added a new section that reads the following:

Is it safe? At the moment we cannot answer this question, since the encryption methods used by the company to protect users from unauthorized attacks and access have not been disclosed. You will have to give him the benefit of the doubt, although from tuexperto.com we recommend using alternative email addresses and different passwords to the passwords used in other services.

Houseparty's privacy policy leaves much to be desired

So much so that it breaches some points of the current Data Protection Law and the European GDPR. This is stated by Suzanne Vergnolle, renowned specialist in law and privacy, on her personal Twitter account.

twitter.com/SuVergnolle/status/1241757928962523138

Specifically, the specialist emphasizes several points collected by the section of the Houseparty website aimed at privacy. The points Vergnolle collects dictate the following:

Houseparty claims ownership of all content that is made through the platform.
Although you can request the elimination of personal data collected by the application, the truth is that Houseparty does not ensure its complete destruction.
The content derived from the application is declared as non-personal, so the voluntary exclusion of the different users has no validity whatsoever.
By default, the platform tracks user actions within the application even when anti-tracking tools are used.

Suzanne's counterargument can be seen in the Twitter thread linked above.

Houseparty collects much more information than you think

It's a fact, Houseparty collects a lot of information. Too much information, dare I say. On the Houseparty.com privacy page we can find out all the data that the platform uses for its own benefit, which is nothing more than making money with advertising and personalized advertisements.

Although its policy includes dozens of points related to privacy and data, the sections in which an excessive use of these is mentioned are three, which we will see below:

We use certain information to enable you to participate in Houseparty and to improve your experience: we use information to suggest other users with whom you want to connect. We also use information so that you can invite new people to join Houseparty and provide or suggest specific features.
We use certain information to improve our products: saving certain preferences you choose, tracking events on Houseparty, and recording other performance data, among others. We use this information to personalize your experience, analyze product trends, and develop and improve our products.
We use certain information for marketing purposes: We use information to share updates on new products and special offers, including promotions, surveys and contests, by email, in our application or on social media platforms. These may be our own offers or products or some third party offers or products that we think you may find interesting.