Houseparty says the app has not been hacked – now offers $1 million to anyone who can prove the hack

• Users across the world have taken to Twitter to complain about how Houseparty has been hacking into other apps on their phones like Spotify.
• Houseparty’s parent company has denied these reports.
• Houseparty has said that it would pay a $1 million bounty to find out the entity behind what the company described as a paid commercial smear campaign.

The app of the quarantine season is Houseparty. Locked in their homes, people from around the world have been logging in to Houseparty, for a virtual party with their friends. The app with its variety of games and fun quirks where you can crash a mutual friend’s party became a hit immediately.

But now comes trouble. Users across the world have taken to Twitter to complain about how Houseparty has been hacking into other apps on their phones like Spotify.



Houseparty has said that it would pay a $1 million bounty to find out the entity behind what the company described as a paid commercial smear campaign.

People have also been sharing a thread of screenshots, where users have noticed new logins onto their Spotify and Uber accounts. Some have even complained that their bank accounts have been hacked.

However, Houseparty has denied such reports. "We’ve found no evidence to suggest a link between Houseparty and the compromises of other unrelated accounts," an Epic Games spokesperson told Business Insider UK.

"As a general rule, we suggest all users choose strong passwords when creating online accounts on any platform. Use a unique password for each account, and use a password generator or password manager to keep track of passwords, rather than using passwords that are short and simple,” the spokesperson told Business Insider UK.

Epic Games is the American video game company that’s behind Houseparty. The app actually came into existence in 2016 and had a short-lived fame but the quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic brought back the app to its victory.

Meanwhile, security experts too have dismissed that Houseparty could have hacked into your phone.

"The news that Houseparty has been hacked is causing a bit of a stir on social media at the moment. The puzzling thing is that there's no evidence to suggest that Houseparty has been hacked and credentials stolen. Houseparty's popularity has skyrocketed lately due to many people being stuck at home and wanting to connect with others. One likely scenario is that the Houseparty app is the last app many users may have installed and registered using the same credentials as other apps, such as Netflix, Spotify and countless others. Criminals are constantly using old, compromised credentials to access online services in credential stuffing attacks. Correlating these two events seems to be what's causing all the fuss. If you are worried about these types of cyberattacks, our advice is to always turn on multifactor authentication (when available) and use a password manager to create and store long, complex and unique passwords for each service you sign up for," said John Shier, senior security advisor at Sophos.


The news has reached its Indian users, who have discovered the app recently. They are now forwarding the screenshots of the supposed hacks and questioning – should we delete houseparty, the one fun thing?

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