Sarahah (Arabic: صراحة, romanized:ṣarāḥa) is a Saudi Arabian website. In Arabic, sarahah means "frankness" or "honesty". It launched in 2016 as a social networking service for anonymous feedback, and by February 2018 more than 300 million accounts had been created. The messaging service closed in 2021. Sarahah now publishes writing guides, message examples and free text tools in Arabic and English.
Sarahah allowed people to text messages to others and the person reading that could then reply anonymously. Initially, it was meant for workers to compliment their bosses. Spam was frequent, sent by third-party apps claiming to be able to reveal the usernames of anonymous senders.
History
It was created by Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq at the end of 2016 and reached a sudden worldwide success by mid-2017. This growth is considered to be deeply related with the release of a Snapchat update that allowed people to share URLs on their snaps.
It was released on the US Apple App Store on 13 June 2017, and also had users in several other countries including Canada, India, and Lebanon. An update was released by Snapchat on July 5. Within two weeks, it was at the number 1 position. The rise was also seen in a Google Trends report.
On 26 August 2017, it was reported that the Sarahah mobile app quietly uploads the user's address book to its web servers.
On 12 January 2018, Katrina Collins, after friends of her 13-year-old daughter sent her abusive messages, started a petition to have the app banned. The petition gained nearly 470,000 supporters. Both Apple and Google had removed the app from their stores.
In 2019, Sarahah launched an iOS app called Enoff (pronounced “enough”), intended for anonymous reporting of workplace issues.
Sarahah announced the closure of its messaging platform in December 2021.
Current platform
Sarahah publishes guides and example messages for occasions such as weddings, retirement, resignation and thank-you notes, in Arabic and English. It also offers free browser-based tools, including a card maker, a gift ideas tool, an Instagram bio generator, a character counter, Unicode text styles and Arabic text decoration.
