A data protection incident occurred at a service provider of the actually anonymous app Jodel. Several users across Germany have complained about spam mails that they received under an email address that they only use for the “student app”. After information from an affected person, the Berlin data protection officer confirmed the incident to heise online. According to a Jodel spokesman, the investigations are still ongoing. The operating company The Jodel Venture GmbH leaves open how many users are affected. The Jodel app allows people to communicate with others within a certain radius.
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Post with information about the data protection incident at Jodel
(Image: Jodel)
The incident only affects the “technically separate customer support and the tool used there by the third-party provider Zendesk,” says Jodel. The company currently believes that the email addresses of people who have had contact with customer support in the past few months have been affected. All those affected would be “informed as soon as possible”. Jodel states that it is currently investigating the incident together with Zendesk and external data protection experts.
But not completely anonymous
In its data protection declaration, the company states that it will not pass on data such as e-mail addresses to third parties without express consent. It also states that personal data “(are) disclosed in cases where such disclosure is required by law”. For example, an arrest was made in 2017 after an amok threat at the University of Trier. In this case, coordinates and IP address were published, as the FAZ reported at the time.
Founded in 2014 primarily for students, Jodel reached millions of users in 2018 and even expanded to Saudi Arabia. The platform is designed for people to share “the latest news, events, stories and jokes” with others nearby, as the company puts it. According to Business Insider, new functions are planned, such as making appointments via yodelling.
Supposed anonymity
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In some cases, very intimate information is shared on the platform, since users do not have to register and feel safe in terms of anonymity. Nevertheless, a research group from the University of Passau managed to determine the location from a sample of around 38,000 Jodel messages in 96 percent of the cases with an accuracy of ten meters.
(mack)
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