Houseparty has a "prize" of one million for the first to prove "smear campaign"

For many in social isolation and quarantined around the world due to COVID-19, the Houseparty app has become the ideal escape by allowing you to make video calls with a group of up to eight people and play at the same time. However, the application has since yesterday been linked to a warning of a hacker attack that went viral on social media, although it has already guaranteed that it is investigating those it says are "indications that the recent hacker rumors have been spread. for a paid defamation commercial campaign to harm the app. " The first to prove it even has a "millionaire" reward from Houseparty: a million dollars.

In the early afternoon of this Monday, the accusations against the application that SAPO TeK itself had already made known began to multiply. "I recommend everyone to delete the Houseparty app" and "my Spotify account was hacked after installing the app" were some of the user shares that invaded Twitter.

Emerging from an institution or a specific company, netizens began to blame the application for the security alerts they were receiving from services like Netflix, Spotify, Instagram and PayPal. The theory is that the problems, which will have led to the elimination of several accounts, started to appear after the installation of Houseparty and, therefore, the app is to blame.

Houseparty has already come on Twitter, which is investigating "indications that recent hacker rumors have been spread by a commercial paid defamation campaign to harm the app." The application is now offering a million dollars to the first person to prove it. .

On Monday, the application guaranteed that all accounts are secure, the service secure, has never been compromised, and does not store passwords for other sites. Still, the truth that it seems that panic has settled on social networks.

Experts find no evidence of attacks

Forbes spoke with Lukas Stefanko, an expert at the anti-virus and cybersecurity solutions company ESET, who guarantees that it has not detected "any misuse in relation to the app's permissions". Also Lus Martins, responsible for cybersecurity at Multicert, explained to the Public that no evidence was found that the application could misuse the permissions that are given to him in the installation process. This is after a quick application analysis by the company's intrusion testing team.

It is important to note that, from the moment you download the application, Houseparty has access to services such as location, Bluetooth, user's camera (required to make calls) and contacts. For this reason, "you need to pay attention to the type of information (they require), warns Lus Martins.