Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has publicly apologized for the privacy concerns the company has caused with its new Privacy Policy, explaining that Spotify will never use customers’ photos, microphone, location or contacts without their permission. The privacy policy change has certainly backfired from a PR standpoint; publishing a transparent letter like this alongside the updated text would’ve been a far wiser move.
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If you’re a user of Spotify, are you ok with them collecting all this information from you more than they already have? However, it will only provide anonymous data to advertisers ratter than revealing the identity of specific customers.
Spotify seems to have landed itself in deep waters after users took to social media to bash the company regarding the new privacy policy that was recently introduced. Let us know how you feel about it by leaving your comment below, or on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter. “Please consider not being evil”, he wrote.
Ek’s blog post titled “Sorry”, does confirm that the platform may require some user details but ensures audiences that it will be done strictly to improve users’ Spotify experience.
In addition to the smartphone data, Spotify is looking to “collect information about your location based on, for example, your phone’s Global Positioning System location or other forms of locating mobile devices”. Also, the company will collect information from Global Positioning System and from other sensors such as movement of the users, the speed of their movement and so on.
“We should have done a better job in communicating what these policies mean and how any information you choose to share will-and will not-be used”, Ek wrote in a blog post.
“With your permission, we may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files”. Spotify is starting to do a lot more personalization in how it delivers music, so the app could benefit from knowing when you’re running or in the vehicle . Ek says that the privacy policy will be updated in the next few weeks to better reflect how data will actually be used.
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Daniel Ek: And again, it’s *if* you use those features that we’ll ask permissions for it. The TL;DR explanation of exactly how Spotify plans to access your personal data is simply that the streaming music service will not access your photos, location, voice, or contacts, unless you give “your explicit permission”.
