The other day, I was asked – “Bal, what do you use for video conferencing?”
Well, I use Cisco WebEx (preferred) and then for my football training (in current circumstances) I use Zoom. I have used Skype but not a fan of it, and there’s plenty more I know exist.
For fun… with the family, I use Houseparty!
Houseparty is a video calling app – but you can do more, like play games and have some fun.
You can ‘wave’ at friends, message them and more besides the obvious video call.
Houseparty has grown in both value and audience size in recent weeks – especially with this lockdown going on, across most of the World… for example, there were 130,000 downloads in early Feb compared to 2,000,000 in mid-March!
However…. recently, there were a number of ‘rumours’ about the app was hacking into other apps, money being transferred from bank accounts, Spotify playlists going missing, etc…
Then all of a sudden, everyone started to delete the app!
The owner of video chat and game app Houseparty is offering a $1m (£810,750) reward for evidence the company was the victim of a commercial smear campaign.
Sad to see fake news and such a smear campaign spread so quickly and also for many people to believe it so quickly – but today, everyone is worried about scams, phishing etc… security is paramount!
But… before you start believing everyone else, look at some of the facts first – is there an official statement from the company?
If you’re Netflix or Spotify has been hacked, how can that be if there is no link between Houseparty and those apps? And if the company are putting up a reward (sizeable) for someone to come forward and show the evidence…. (and no one has to date….) then that could mean a) they’ve not encountered anything or b) it’s all not real.
Either way, stay safe… stay at home… and have more virtual coffee mornings, like me… using the video calling feature on WhatsApp.