Daniel Ek and Minecraft creator Notch debate Spotify privacy policy
musically.com
musically.com
Why a user cannot elect to nominally provide permissions to an app, but restrict the content of different grants (so an app may see an empty phone book by default or an empty Pictures folder) is beyond me. It borders on abusive.
Actually, OS X now has the beginnings of an iOS-like permission system for location services and access to your contacts.
> Sure, you can hack something together using sandboxing/containers/VMs, but none of the operating systems provide this by default
There I meant a fully fledged user-facing permission system with 'this'.
You're not here to discuss anything. You're here to impose your opinion and do battle with anyone who doesn't agree.
I bet you keep replying to me no matter what I say.
And who installs apps on their PC anymore, maybe after your initial setup? The point is you install apps you know and trust. I don't think notepad++ is uploading my photo library somewhere.
And there's a word for PC apps that do the wrong thing: (ad/mal/crap)ware. It's one of the reasons I do as much online in a webbrowser as possible - its a hellla lot more secure than downloading and installing stuff all the time.
More advanced people can use XPrivacy or similar:
The problem is the way permissions work. You should be able to give temporary individual permissions to each app for each service to only a portion of your storage. For example, not all photos forever, but just these photos.
The way the permissions currently work on Android is insane.
It is also insane that people are okay with sharing all of this information with facebook, twitter, verizon, google, lyft, uber, yelp and 50 other apps.
That is much better handled by dedicated pickers running in isolated processes which can give temporary access to explicitly selected datasets without the application having any access rights to even those data in the long term.
Surely Android has some sort of media picker intent which lets users select media without giving applications "background access" to all your media library, no? Unless the application is image edition software, I see no reason for it to get any passive access to the user's images.
I haven't written any Android apps though so I don't know the details.
If it has permissions to access all files at any time sure, point is there's no reason for the application to have that, and it's an opt-in.
However, it is always a trade-off between usability and security.
I do hope that, when application sandboxing goes mainstream, it is not only going to be used to mitigate dependency hell, but also to provide a nice and featureful (and usable!) interface for filesystem/networking/etc isolation and monitoring with white/black/greylisting and fake permissions (i.e. pretend an application has a permission and return made-up data).
Heck, it'd probably be best to make full isolation of every executable the default and selectively introduce (fake) permissions, such that it just gets the minimum that is needed/desired.
Basically, have the desktop environment running in a non-network-connected machine, and have different VMs for different purposes with application windows seamlessly appearing on the desktop. If I have a spotify VM (or even listen in a disposable-removed-on-close VM), there's nothing for them to access.
EDIT: Not saying this is for everyone. At this point I would not let my grandmother use it. But I can see the concept becoming very easy to use.
https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/how-can-i-close-my-sp...
Yet clicking on the "Contact Form" link returns me right to:
https://support.spotify.com/uk/contact-spotify-support/
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Digging through their forums I eventually located this:
But if I can only use the app by giving access to those features, even as a paid subscriber, then I will absolutely cancel my paid account and look to other services.
Makes me think the OS should provide a 'Just this once' button when being asked to allow access to extra permissions.
That Android has 'one-ticket-for-everything-LOL' security flags is sad, but that doesn't mean Spotify then thus has the responsibility to work with that and if they are so serious regarding privacy of their users, offer a way to make me control what they can see / do, however I can't: at install I have to give permissions and after that I can't control what they can see / do or not, not in the app, not in my account, nowhere. I just have to trust them.
That last part is a bit difficult at the moment.
If they siphon up your contact list and store it before Marshmallow comes out, blocking it later won't do you much good.
Remind me to not buy a phone from Sony again.
Every time a company updates their app permissions, we get this kind of permission-hysteria.
THEY WANT TO DOWNLOAD ALL OF MY PHOTOS!!!
Well, actually, they want you to be able to set a photo as the cover of a playlist, and there is no difference between "Allow user to upload 1 photo" and "Have access to all of users photo" in terms of mobile permissions.\
THEY WANT ACCESS TO MY GPS!!
Well, actually, they're rolling out a Run feature already implemented on iOS, and, as always, you can disable GPS or customize its functionality on both platforms pretty deeply.
Every permissions update we get these histrionics. Notch should have the foresight to step back and listen before jumping in with a million followers.
“With your permission, we may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files. Local law may require that you seek the consent of your contacts to provide their personal information to Spotify, which may use that information for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy.”
It's hard to know what they really want and what they say they want - we need to fix the way we let apps use our data.
I think Notch's response is quite accurate: “But I do understand how easy it is to make up small features to require access to the entire phone so you can sell your customers.”
Two things can be true at the same time. Just because the public, published reason is innocuous doesn't mean there's not some MBA just waiting to get his hands on that data.
Nope.
With giant microphones comes giant responsibility.
If he doesn't want 10 major blogs and newssites harping on his ever word, he should use an alt account.
But, of course, when he personally tweets a company or CEO and calls them evil in front of millions of people, many who do business with the company... that's a heavily irresponsible way to behave unless you're sure of what you're saying. How many tens of thousands of $$ did Notch's tweet cost them?
There's no way I as a user can prevent other usage of my photos after I give them permission to access them all. I therefore have to trust Spotify that they won't abuse their access to my (and all the other people who install the app)'s photos.
Now I understand you trust them completely, and that's your right, I don't trust them at all especially considering their strong ties with Facebook.
Regarding their public 'Sorry' posted this afternoon: https://news.spotify.com/us/2015/08/21/sorry-2/ it's still vague. They state "Photos: We will never access your photos without explicit permission", but there's no state possible where the user can use the app and _not_ have given permission, as the app is only installable if the user gives access to the photos through the Android access rights at install time. After that the app already has access to the photos, and Spotify can state that they won't access the photos 'without explicit permission' but that's moot: to not give them explicit permission I have just 1 option: not install the app (otherwise I have to, see above). Which is a bit of a shit option, really, if you pay for the service (like I did) and want to listen to music.
There are 3rd party systems like XPrivacy which allows you to individually allow actions like this.
For example Waze and The Weather Channel app wont let me set Location Services to "While Using" (unlike Google maps and Apple Maps). Instead I am left with no access to location or Always on which drains my battery horribly.
Beside I shouldn't have to install a 3rd party to be able to restrict access.
Very vague, let me tell you what.
Use an iPhone.
2) I know how permissions work on mobile devices, therefore I know exactly why they need access to all this new stuff and I know the permission can be denied if I wanted to
Those two things are not even remotely related. Your knowledge of the permissions on a mobile device sheds exactly zero light on what is going on in the minds of the Spotify employees who participated in this decision.
Comes down to whether you trust corporations or not.
If they had carefully enumerated why they needed all that data, under what cirumstances the app would actually use it, and limits on what they promised to do with it then people would have been happier.
But no, it basically says you must give access to all the data on your phone, your contacts, your facebook account details, your physical location, and gives them permission to do whatever they like with them including posting them all in public