Il Privacy Guarantor imposed a fine of two million euros on Alpha Exploration, the US company that owns Clubhousethe social network characterized by ‘rooms’ in which conversations can be organized (or listened to).
The sanction punishes, in particular, lack of transparency on the use of user data and their contacts; the ability for users to storing and sharing audios without the consent of the registered persons; the profiling and sharing of account information without the identification of a correct legal basis; the indefinite retention times of the recordings made by the social network to counter any abuses.
Clubhouse, which at the time of the investigations – it was 2021 – mattered more than 16 million global users of which about 90 thousand in Italy, will have to take a series of measures to comply. Furthermore, any further processing of information carried out for marketing and profiling without specific consent was prohibited.
American society Alpha Exploration it will also have to introduce a function that allows users to know, before entering the conversation room, if there is a possibility that the chat will be recorded. And it will have to introduce a mechanism to inform those who are not yet users about the use that will be made of their personal data.
“Alpha Exploration – concludes the Authority’s note – will finally have to carry out an impact assessment on the data processing carried out through the Clubhouse platform”.