Viral app Neon vows to return to sell more of your phone calls to AI companies

Neon, a service that pays you for recordings of your phone calls and then sells those to AI companies for training data, seems set to return in the wake of a privacy breach. The app swiftly went viral after its debut, but it has been on ice since last week after a security flaw emerged. 

According to CNET, Neon founder Alex Kiam apologized for the incident in an email to users and said the app would return “soon.” It went offline after TechCrunch found users were able to access other people’s call recordings, along with transcripts and metadata. Neon pledged to add extra layers of security during the outage before making a comeback. 

While the app has been offline, users have been unable to cash out their payments. Neon pays them up to $30 per day for call recordings — 30 cents per minute for chats with other Neon users, and 15 cents per minute for calls with anyone else. It offers $30 for referring a newcomer to the app as well. 

In the email to users on Tuesday, Liam wrote that, “Your earnings have not disappeared — when we’re back online, we’ll pay you everything you’ve earned, plus a little bonus to thank you for your patience!” 

Neon says it only records the user’s side of the conversation when they place a call through the app. If the person on the other end is a Neon user as well, it records both sides of the chat. The company claims its tech automatically filters out personal information like names and phone numbers. Some privacy experts have warned people not to use Neon, in part because of potential pitfalls related to two-party consent laws for recording conversations in various jurisdictions.