The changes in Spotify‘s terms of service, if agreed to, also allows it to be privy to users’ social media activity and other sensor data that is stored on today’s smartphones. The answer could be that the company may have adopted a new revenue stream under which it is selling user data to third parties.
Advertisement
After announcing that he had cancelled his account, he was engaged by Spotify founder and fellow Swede Daniel Ek who played down the changes.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority (NDPA) has sharply criticised the intrusive new terms of use brought in by the music streaming service Spotify, describing them as “a new level on the collection of personal data”.
Ek then explained that photos will not be accessed without “explicit permission”, and that there will be no scanning or importing of a user’s photo albums or camera roll.
For those who are wondering what the big deal is, part of the policy read that they would collect media from your device like photos and contact information.
“This means delivering the ideal recommendations for every moment, and helping you to enjoy, discover and share more music than ever before”. And if you choose to share location information but later change your mind, you will always have the ability to stop sharing.
Instead, each of these items requested by Spotify are being used to “allow you to customize your Spotify experience”.
Contacts: We will never scan or import your contacts without your permission.
One of the new terms states that it is up to the user to ensure that people listed in the contacts list on their handset are happy for their phone number to be shared with the music platform. On Thursday, we speculated that the new sensor data might have something to do with Spotify’s new running feature.
Finally, the privacy policy also asks for access to your smartphone’s microphone.
They say that they will share that information with “partners”, which means that Spotify could now be telling people about where you are and, oddly, how quickly you’re getting there.
Some of the data Spotify wants to collect makes absolute sense.
Spotify’s new privacy policy is… aggressive, to say the least.
Advertisement
Perhaps sensing that Twitter was not the best way to hash out a privacy debate, Ek turned to Spotify’s blog this morning to spell out exactly how Spotify accesses content. All these examples require Spotify to get your permission before using. It will also seek to access your Global Positioning System location data and information about how you’re traveling – whether by foot on in a vehicle.
