The internet is up in arms over a new privacy policy for Spotify’s streaming music service. Thousands of people have tweeted in disagreement in outrage in the mysterious and intrusive policy. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says responded to the outrage and people questioning why the company wanted to collect everything from contacts to photos. The policy is listed below!:
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.
The searching of contacts could be used to find contacts when searching for friends, but it sounds odd for the company to search for or use photos. However, Spotify could need to use the photos when people set profile pictures.
So that really wasn’t that bad, was it? Here’s the second change:
Depending on the type of device that you use to interact with the Service and your settings, we may also collect information about your location based on, for example, your phone’s GPS location or other forms of locating mobile devices (e.g., Bluetooth). We may also collect sensor data (e.g., data about the speed of your movements, such as whether you are running, walking, or in transit).
The company has a new feature call Spotify Running which would need to use your GPS to track how fast your moving. It has taken a long time for the company to add these terms into the privacy policy, but they aren’t new features for the app.
Ready for number three?
You may integrate your Spotify account with Third Party Applications. If you do, we may receive similar information related to your interactions with the Service on the Third Party Application, as well as information about your publicly available activity on the Third Party Application. This includes, for example, your “Like”s and posts on Facebook. We may use cookies and other technologies to collect this information; you can learn more about such use in the section Information about cookies, other technologies, and third-party data collection of this Privacy Policy.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has issued an apology for causing “a lot of confusion” with the new privacy policy. In a post on Spotify’s site, he says the company “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.” He follows up to breakdown what each of the new permissions are used for, and says Spotify will “update the new Privacy Policy in the coming weeks to better reflect what we have explained above.”
Tell us in the comments down below what you think about Spotify’s new privacy policy and if you’d delete your account over these terms!