You Can’t Do Squat About Spotify’s Eerie New Privacy Policy
wired.com
wired.com
No audio CD, nor the files I've ripped from them, have ever tried to collect my personal data for marketing purposes.
How long will this be reasonable? If your friend uses it, and you're connected to that friend via Facebook or similar (LinkedIn for you careerist types, I suppose), is there any mechanism which prevents Spotify from using that connection to get information about you? Will there be a mechanism a week from now?
How about reading your name off a contacts list and doing a search?
It won't be pretty when the Reddit database eventually leaks, though.
Any big player in the data game can do the same - and by "can", I mean "does".
>Our servers may also automatically collect information about you, your online behavior and your computer, mobile or other device. The information collected may include, without limitation, the make, model, settings, specifications (e.g., CPU speed, connection speed, browser type, operating system, device identifier) and geographic location of you and/or your computer, mobile or other device, as well as date/time stamp, IP address, pages visited, time of visits, content viewed, ads viewed, the site(s), application(s), destination(s), and/or service(s) you arrived from, and other clickstream data.
Wired wants to know where I am going!
>If you choose to access, visit and/or use any third party social networking service(s) that may be integrated with the Service, we may receive personally identifiable information and other information about you and your computer, mobile or other device that you have made available to those services, including information about your contacts on those services.
They want to know my contacts!
>We reserve the right to use, transfer, assign, sell, share, and provide access to all personally identifiable information and other information about you and your computer, mobile or other device that we receive through third-party social networking services in the same ways described in this Agreement as all of your other information.
Awesome! So even if the third-party social networking services isn't selling my personally identifiable information as per their privacy policy, Wired can and will!
>As discussed below, you may opt out of third party tracking on the Service at any time. However, we do not currently support any browser based Do Not Track (DNT) settings or participate in any DNT frameworks, and we do not assign any meaning to any potential DNT track signals you may send or alter any of our data collection or use practices in response to such signals.
Wired will ignore any Do Not Track headers I send them, and track me anyways. At least they're being honest.
Well at least Wired offers a partial opt-out that isn't "don't use Wired":
>If you do not wish to have your personally identifiable information shared with third parties, contact our Privacy Policy Coordinator as described at the end of this document.
Though they will still collect the data and it could still be transferred to another business if Wired assets are sold.
Why am I pointing this out? Because Privacy Policies suck. Practically all of them - and the sites ganging up on Spotify about this update have equally bad Privacy Policies.
Pot meet kettle.