Spotify's new privacy policy angers users
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
"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," reads the update.
I think this is the worst part. Sounds like "hey, we're collecting private information, please make sure we're allowed to do so. If we ilegally collect private information, that's the users fault - we alerted them to get permission from their contacts!".
@eldsjal The bigger problem is that you're in bed with
facebook (that I also don't have installed), and thus
have zero inherent trust.
Sharing all your friends' contact details with Spotify despite them possibly having never even seen the ToS just so you can listen to some tunes seems more "selfish and naive" if you ask me. Potentially in violation of EU data protection laws too.
He's voting with his wallet because he disagrees with the direction that a company seems to be taking. Everyone is free to choose for themselves based on their personal comfort level. How is this selfish and naive?
His opinion, but definitely not everybody's. Probably not even a majority.
> @notch And again it's if you use those features that we'll ask permissions for it.
How will they ask me for permission to my contact data shared with them via someone else's address book?
The Wired article suggests that Spotify are only offering a binary choice: allow the little Spotify creep to squat on my phone taking notes on me, or stop using the service altogether. Are those really my only options?
I'm an email-only user (no Facebook for me).
I just want to stream music that I want to listen to. That's it. I don't want any social features, I don't want my play list being generated automatically by my heart rate, etc.
See what 'always' is worth if revenue growth does not keep up and the CEO changes.
Okay, this sort of line is really starting to piss me off - especially when companies do the exact opposite of what that line says, yet they still use it to somehow trick users into thinking everything is fine.
Can we push companies to have a "Privacy policy" where they talk all about how they protect your data, and then a "Privacy intrusion policy" or let's say a tamer "Data usage policy" where they tell you exactly how much access they have to your data and how they are using it for their own purposes?
I suggest you to check out Mixcloud. It's a service made specially for uploading mixes, but it doesn't allow you to download them for the reasons I said earlier. It's also free and does not require you to sign up for an account.
Now, I'm not happy that they'd even ask. But the service doesn't stop working when I deny access. Since the change in TOS, the apps didn't ask again.
I do, however, think any companies wanting access to data outside what I feel is the app's purview should really stop couching their use in Marketing Speak ("We use this data to improve our service, let you discover content also consumed by your acquaintances...") and be more informative about where the data goes.
If you don't want to give them permission to something, don't give it. Of course, that will also mean you can't use features that depend on it.
It's not the same as giving permission to Google Maps to use my location because I know exactly why it wants that. With Spotify, "improving our services" is just not a good enough reason.
Screwing people over is okay if you're transparent about it?
edit: I live in the U.S.
edit: thanks for the replies clearing this up.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/spotify-defends-new-facebook-re...
They stopped requiring facebook logins a while back but to be honest it left a bad taste in my mouth. Glad I didn't bother with subscribing.
I never gave them a second look to see if that requirement changed.
Sign up with Facebook
or
Sign up with your email address
I'd love to be able to use one service that "solves" music for me but Apple Music isn't even close and I'm astounded at how botched the release has been.
So yeah. Your mileage may vary... quite wildly, apparently!
edit: oh wait, yeah - the "For You" tab that has all those little circles to "tell us what you like". ITunes has almost 10 years of listening data, can't they figure that out for me?
With the multiple tab experience, you could browse into something on one tab, switch to another tab, and switch back, to see what you had previously browsed to (this is inherently how UITabBarController works). You can't anymore, you have to go back to the root to switch to browsing artists from albums, etc.
Another thing at all of the services completely fail at is disabling online music (iTunes Match, things not "available offline" on Spotify) when you have no cell service (i.e. on the train, when you're likely to be listening to music on your cell phone!). It's impossible to listen to streaming music at that time, so why even show it?
In iOS Music you used to need to go into the Settings app.
This should Just Work.
I'm old, I grew up with tapes and vinyl, I don't want to shuffle, I don't want to share my listening to facebook (I'll message my buddy when I've found a gem), I don't want to know what my friends are listenting to (my backlog is big enough already), I don't want crappy playlists (I have radio already, thank you), I'm too lazy to create my own playlists, and the last thing I want to do when running is listen to music.
All I would like to do is save a couple dozen artists I like so I can slowly dig through their oevre and it would be great to have a way to manage that (one endlessly scrolling list is not enough). I still haven't figured out how the play queue gets populated.
Finishing off with something positive, the wifi sync is pretty awesome, first time I got some music stored on my iphone (I use a linux laptop).
Is this some still-unreleased version of the app the article is about, or has the privacy policy changed with no changes to the data that Spotify actually accesses?
There's a better permissions system coming in Android Marshmallow, but that doesn't help anyone right now.
In practice, the app could ask for permission to use the GPS the first time you use the "running" function, and then spy on your location ever after. The difference is in the perceived privacy.
At least they could have deprecated that system and allowed it to work with old apps, while encouraging new apps to use an iOS-like we'll-ask-when-we-need-it kind of system?
If I'm using the app and discover a new feature that asks me for permission A, I understand why, and can make a reasonable decision.
But the context of me switching to the "running" feature and then I'm asked if I want to allow the GPS function is enough for me to not feel watched. It's all about context.
Same if the app asked for permission to see your photos (forever) when you use the custom cover art feature.
For a malicious app this makes no difference, but for those apps we (sort of) trust, the context makes all the difference.
Permission would be necessary to actually query for media programmatically, which is the real issue. Currently, they are conflated.
For location, I suppose that the "Google Maps is using your location" bar at the top could be expanded and always present when the location permission is enabled. Tapping it would revoke the permission until it is enabled again. This could get annoying though, some apps legitimately do depend on location all the time.
In this regard I've had a good experience with Privacy Guard feature on CyanogenMod 11 (based of Android 4.4 KitKat) and later. It allows you to control each app's access to a permission - allowed, ignored (disallowed), or "always ask". The last one triggers a popup whenever an app X wants to user permission Y (e.g. "Skype wants to modify your contacts" - wait what?!) where you can allow or ignorile it, and also set it as a future default to prevent being nagged with the popup. Although I personally very much like the option to opt-in or opt-out, I understand that even Privacy Guard UX is not for everyone. Luckily, you can choose if you need Privacy Guard and activate it per app, or have it automatically activated for every newly installed app with the "always ask" option for each permission.
It's ok if you want it, but some of us would rather have basic functionalities only and deny extra permissions.