Controversy Over KakaoTalk 'Multi-Profile' Exposure... Kakao Says "Not True"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Yoo Hyun-seok] A controversy arose as a malfunction occurred in 'Multi-Profile,' one of the KakaoTalk features.

After the KakaoTalk outage on the 15th, news about Multi-Profile exposure became a hot topic on social networking services (SNS) and various online communities on the 16th.

On online cafes, posts claiming privacy exposure due to the Multi-Profile malfunction were uploaded, receiving high views and many comments.

As the name suggests, Multi-Profile is a feature that allows users to show different profiles depending on the recipient, enabling up to three additional profiles besides the basic profile.

Kakao launched the 'Multi-Profile' feature in beta on January 28 last year. At the time of launch, Kakao explained that the introduction of the Multi-Profile feature reflected users' voices who needed profile settings and exposure tailored to each relationship, rather than a single KakaoTalk profile, while interacting with others in various relationships.

On this day, Kakao stated that Multi-Profile can be set to be visible only to specific individuals (groups), and even amid the error, it was not exposed beyond the groups that users had previously set to be visible.

A Kakao official explained, "Due to the outage, when updating the Multi-Profile, there was a delay in speed, and in some cases, the previous profile was displayed even after changing the Multi-Profile," adding, "Even in such cases, it was not exposed to an unspecified majority outside the groups previously set."

The official added, "Most KakaoTalk message sending and receiving have now been restored, but there may be individual differences in whether other functions such as Multi-Profile are operating normally."