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Hit App Sarahah Quietly Uploads Your Address Book (theintercept.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sarahah, a new app that lets people sign up to receive anonymized, candid messages, has been surging in popularity; somewhere north of 18 million people are estimated to have downloaded it from Apple and Google's online stores, making it the No. 3 most downloaded free software title for iPhones and iPads. Sarahah bills itself as a way to "receive honest feedback" from friends and employees. But the app is collecting more than just feedback messages. When launched for the first time, it immediately harvests and uploads all phone numbers and email addresses in your address book. Although Sarahah does in some cases ask for permission to access contacts, it does not disclose that it uploads such data, nor does it seem to make any functional use of the information. Zachary Julian, a senior security analyst at Bishop Fox, discovered Sarahah is uploading of private information when he installed the app on his Android phone, a Galaxy S5 running Android 5.1.1. The phone was outfitted with monitoring software, known as Burp Suite, which intercepts internet traffic entering and leaving the device, allowing the owner to see what data is sent to remote servers. When Julian launched Sarahah on the device, Burp Suite caught the app in the act of uploading his private data.
I was told that VCs will only invest in one of two things:
Apps that sling ads.
Apps that suck data in large quanitites.
This is why stuff like Meitu got so much funding and praise. The app did little to nothing except give a lot of data to its owners.
Similar with Sarahah. Some relatively shitty servers are up, and now some unknown people over in the Middle East now have a ton of connections of Americans and Europeans, as well as private, intimate things of their life. Perfect intel gathering for people who don't like Americans.