Sarahah App Uploads Your Contacts To Their Server—Find Your Friend Feature
Sarahah app is getting popular with a lightning speed, it also classed as the most popular free app on the Play Store in the short span of time, also becoming a viral forum on social media, the anonymous feedback and messaging app is now under security checks, the app reportedly harvests users data, especially phone contacts and upload them to their server according to Verge.
The security analyst Zachary Julian first spotted the app’s behavior and reported it to The Intercept. Zain Tawfiq, the app’s founder said the contacts are being uploaded to the server for a reason, the new upcoming feature of the app named “Find your friends” is delayed due to some technicalities, he said that in a response to “The Intercept’s” discovery and behavior of the app which uploads users contacts to the server.
He tweeted his response on Twitter and said the contacts request will be terminated with the next update, and the contacts are not hosted on Sarahah servers.
When first launched, this app harvests and uploads all phone numbers and email addresses in your address book. https://t.co/MOfzqQ9KmI
— The Intercept (@theintercept) August 27, 2017
Sarahah App asked for contacts for a planned "find your friends" feature
— Zain-Alabdin زين العابدين (@ZainAlabdin878) August 27, 2017
It was delayed due to a technical issue. The database doesn't currently host contacts and the data request will be removed on next update.
— Zain-Alabdin زين العابدين (@ZainAlabdin878) August 27, 2017
There are many posts on various blogs which criticized the behavior of the app, but what other popular apps are doing is out of the question. The growing popularity of the app is, of course, a wakeup call for many app developers.
But the researchers said the company doesn’t seem to be using the user’s data at all for any apparent purpose.
THE APP IS NOT USING YOUR DATA
The app developer said, it asks for permission to have access to users contacts but if the users deny that permission they can still continue using the app. Julian argues that there is no such feature friend list in the app but there is a search feature. But through contacts, you cannot find people, nor there is any section which shows the list of contacts using the app.
Julian found out the app’s behavior by monitoring the app what data its sends and receives from an Android phone, he found out the emails and contacts were on top of the list, the same behavior he discovered on iOS.
Julian also argue that uploading contacts is not such a thing which is not common these days, but users should get something out of it and they should be aware of their data is being used in some way, the feature is not there yet, then why the app is harvesting contacts data for no reason is a question mark?
This year, in the beginning, the users of Unroll.me were outraged when they came to know that their data was sold out to Uber. While, this sort of activity is often covered in the app’s terms and conditions but most users tend to avoid reading the terms hence, keeping them uninformed and unaware of the fact.
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