Sarahah app is stealing your phone's contacts

Off late, a new app called Sarahah took the internet by the storm. For those who are not aware, it is an anonymous social networking app or an instant messaging app that is currently trending in the social media domain. Basically, the app allows its users to send anonymous messages.

Almost everyone leading an active social media life had made an account in the app. Well, it is just for fun right? Guess what, this app is not as harmless as it appears to be. Other than giving bullies a chance to send hateful messages, the Sarahah app has again been accused of the breach of privacy. This app allegedly steals your phone's contacts and transfers them to the company's server.

The discovery was made by security analyst Zachary Julian and The Intercept first reported this. No matter if you are an Android or an iOS user, all the contacts of your phone gets uploaded on the company's server through the Sarahah app.

Well, usually apps requests access to the phonebook, but only if the apps offer a feature that needs contacts. However, the Sarahah app doesn't have any such feature at this moment. So why is the app storing the contacts to the company's server?

According to Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, who is the founder of the Sarahah app, his app is actually storing the contacts as it plans to introduce a new feature later on. This new feature will probably let Sarahah users find other users with the help of phone number.

However, if you don't want that, you have the option to prevent the app from accessing your phone contacts and still use it.

Anyway, here are the top alternatives of the Sarahah app that you can check out.