Sarahah app steals your phone contacts

Sarahah is a newly launched app that has become one of the hottest iPhone and Android apps in the past couple of weeks, allowing its users to sign up to receive anonymised, candid messages from other Sarahah users.

However, it turns out that the app silently uploads users' phone contacts to the company's servers for no good reason, spotted by security analyst Zachary Julian.

When an Android or iOS user downloads and installs the app for the first time, the app immediately harvests and uploads all phone numbers and email addresses from the user's address book, according to The Intercept.

However, the creator of Sarahah, Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, responded to the story by saying his app actually harvests and uploads the contacts from users to the company's servers for a feature that will be implemented at a later time.

However, you can still use Sarahah by blocking the app from accessing your contacts, without risking your contacts to be uploaded to its servers.

To do so, Go to Settings → Personal → Apps, now under Configuration App, open App permission and limit permission of apps you like.