Why Everyone's Totally Overreacting To Spotify's Privacy Policy (Which Isn't As Bad As You Think)
from the it's-not-what-you-think dept
As you may have heard, yesterday there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the fact that Spotify changed its privacy policy in a way that people are calling creepy and eerie. And there's a ton of chatter on Twitter from people insisting that they'll never use Spotify again because of this. The specific changes that have people up in arms sure do sound creepy at first glance. The key problems are that Spotify's new privacy policy says that it "may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files" and that it "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)." There's some other stuff about how it may share information with third party services.I understand, instinctively, why so many people freaked out about this -- but it's a pure overreaction for a variety of reasons, which we'll dig into here. There are problems with this whole scenario, but it has a lot more to do with (1) the stupid reliance on "privacy policies" rather than "user controls" for privacy and (2) Spotify's apparently asleep-at-the-wheel PR team.
Privacy is a Trade-off Not a Thing
As we've said before, if you ever want perfect privacy, you'd never leave your house. The second you leave your home, you're giving up some level of privacy. But it's a trade-off most people think is perfectly reasonable. Privacy is always like that. It's a trade-off between the benefit you get from giving up a little privacy in order to get the thing that you want. The idea that privacy is some absolute "thing" is a weird way of looking at privacy and makes it difficult to do things in a reasonable manner. The real issue, then, is making sure that people understand the trade-offs involved (and we'll get to that below).
Spotify's Privacy Policy is Not that Crazy.
Much of the reaction is because people immediately assumed that there was some nefarious reason why Spotify was going to collect all this information on people. Yet, as a few people pointed out when everyone started freaking out -- and which Spotify eventually clarified in a blog post "apologizing" for the poor roll out, there are legitimate service reasons for each of these requests. Also, the company made it clear that before it actually accesses any of this content, it would first ask your permission. In short, it's like when various services ask if you'd like to "find friends" using a service, you have to first approve it. Same would be true here. And, note, that each of the uses would be for services that some people might actually like (personalizing cover art, voice control, etc.):
The Real Problem is that We Use Privacy Policies at AllPhotos: We will never access your photos without explicit permission and we will never scan or import your photo library or camera roll. If you give us permission to access photos, we will only use or access images that you specifically choose to share. Those photos would only be used in ways you choose and control – to create personalized cover art for a playlist or to change your profile image, for example.
Location: We will never gather or use the location of your mobile device without your explicit permission. We would use it to help personalize recommendations or to keep you up to date about music trending in your area. And if you choose to share location information but later change your mind, you will always have the ability to stop sharing.
Voice: We will never access your microphone without your permission. Many people like to use Spotify in a hands-free way, and we may build voice controls into future versions of the product that will allow you to skip tracks, or pause, or otherwise navigate the app. You will always have the ability to disable voice controls.
Contacts: We will never scan or import your contacts without your permission. Spotify is a social platform and many people like to share playlists and music they discover with their friends. In the future, we may want to give you the ability to find your friends on Spotify by searching for Spotify users in your contacts if you choose to do that.
For many years, we've been pointing out that this whole system of privacy policies is broken. It's one of those ideas that people came up with years ago that sounds good, but isn't. And yet, we're not only stuck with it, we have politicians who keep pushing more requirements for more privacy policies. But that's stupid.
First: the only way you can legally get in trouble over privacy issues is by violating your privacy policy. So every company is incentivized by law to create privacy policies that are very broad and expansive, making it less likely they'll violate them in the first place. The only time such a broad privacy policy backfires is if the public suddenly has a viral panic about it, like this time, but that rarely happens because no one reads privacy policies.
In fact, one of the worst things about privacy policies is that people simply believe if you have a privacy policy it means "oh they'll keep my info private" even if the privacy policy says "we're going to share your information with everyone."
Let's face it: privacy policies are a stupid way to deal with privacy. They don't work. They fuck up incentives. No one reads them. And yet, because politicians are clueless, they're often "required." You end up with grandstanding politicians who play gotcha games on privacy policies, without caring about actual privacy practices.
The Way to Deal With Privacy is MORE TRANSPARENCY and MORE USER CONTROL
Rather than using privacy policies, the real way to deal with privacy is to give the end user more transparency into what's happening and more control. I don't have an iPhone, but I believe it already offers the ability at an individualized level to allow users to block apps from accessing certain features/data on a phone. And I know that the next version of Android is moving to a similar model, including only asking you to approve privacy permissions at the moment the app is requesting it. In other words, when Spotify wants to access your photos, the app will directly ask you for permission at that moment -- and, assuming it's for something you want to do (like customizing your cover art), you're more likely to grant permission without thinking it's creepy at all.
The Real Problem Here Was The Perception Problem
And this is something Spotify should have prepared for much better. The company probably assumed, incorrectly, that no one would really read the new privacy policy, because no one reads privacy policies. But that didn't happen. What Spotify should have done is from the beginning describe the new features it was offering -- with a direct explanation of why that feature might then require a change in the privacy policy, along with the promise that the app will ask permission directly at the time of use. Spotify eventually kind of got there, but they did it after, not before. This goes back to the "more transparency" aspect above. Do it that way, and you have less of a freakout.
So, really, to everyone freaking out over Spotify's privacy policy, I understand the gut reaction reasons for doing so. Of course, at first, it seems fucked up that a music player wants to access your contacts or your location. But there are perfectly legitimate, non-nefarious reasons for doing so. And Spotify could have cut off the freakout by being more transparent and upfront about things at the beginning. But, really, the problem here is our stupid reliance on privacy policies, rather than user controls.
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Filed Under: apps, control, music, privacy, privacy policy, tradeoffs, users
Companies: spotify
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So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
IT'S CRAZY, BUT NO WORSE THAN OTHER SPYING CORPORATIONS SO GIVE UP YOUR PRIVACY TO BE MONETIZED, is what you mean. Instead of railing at the loss of privacy, you just say don't worry about this increment of loss.
Readers: if you will just notice, Masnick supports the "business model" that includes SPYING, and Google most of all because SPYING is its central purpose.
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Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
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So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
IT'S CRAZY, BUT NO WORSE THAN OTHER SPYING CORPORATIONS SO GIVE UP YOUR PRIVACY TO BE MONETIZED, is what you mean. Instead of railing at the loss of privacy, you just say don't worry about this increment of loss.
Readers: if you will just notice, Masnick supports the "business model" that includes SPYING, and Google most of all because SPYING is its central purpose.
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Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
Has your time away from Techdirt double your insanity?
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Re: Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
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Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
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Re: Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
How many of those cameras are publicly available for viewing, on the internet or otherwise? If you can access (insert any store name here)'s cameras without going through a VPN, a proprietary viewing program, and/or password dialog somebody screwed up.
How many of those cameras actually work? You'd be surprised how many cameras are non-functional, either because they're 'drone' cameras and never worked in the first place, or the camera(s) has malfunctioned and the store hasn't gotten around to fixing or replacing them.
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Re: Re: Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
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Re: So you're going with "CRAZY BUT NOT TOO CRAZY"? How exactly did you determine this degree of crazy is okay?
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Enjoy the DMCA vote, asshat.
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This cannot be stressed enough. Really. The main problem with privacy nowadays is that the companies don't have to give full control to the user so said user can veto any points he/she doesn't like. Companies shouldn't need any privacy policy. They should specify what they do with the information in the open and the user should be able to use their product with those points turned off. Or have the option not to buy if it renders the device useless.
Google is one example of failing utterly hard in this privcy aspect with their permissions system. It's way past time they allow users to individually allow (or deny) what the applications have access to. (They do fail in other aspects too but that's the worst because they could have given such control fairly easily already. Any rooted device can do it.)
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Much of the reaction is because people immediately assumed that there was some nefarious reason why Spotify was going to collect all this information on people. Yet, as a few people pointed out when everyone started freaking out -- and which Spotify eventually clarified in a blog post "apologizing" for the poor roll out, there are legitimate service reasons for each of these requests. Also, the company made it clear that before it actually accesses any of this content, it would first ask your permission. In short, it's like when various services ask if you'd like to "find friends" using a service, you have to first approve it. Same would be true here. And, note, that each of the uses would be for services that some people might actually like (personalizing cover art, voice control, etc.):
Bullshit
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Would you like to expand on that?
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It's bad enough
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Re: It's bad enough
Why is it bad? What privacy is actually being lost here?
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Re: Re: It's bad enough
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Re: Re: It's bad enough
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110417/21485513927/smartphone-apps-quietly -using-phone-microphones-cameras-to-gather-data.shtml
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Re: Re: It's bad enough
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The reaction is not so crazy.
The problem is that the privacy policy allows the company to do nefarious things. Even saying (in a post rather than a legal document) that they won't do anything without your "explicit permission" fails on two important points:
1) It could be argued that you gave such permission when you accepted the privacy policy.
2) It's saying "trust us". Maybe Spotify is trustworthy right now, maybe not (I honestly have no idea about their corporate personality), but the second that someone buys Spotify, all of that can change.
I don't think any of that is an overreaction at all. I'd like to see a lot more products and services eliciting the same overreaction.
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Re: The reaction is not so crazy.
I don't really see why. Thing is, if Spotify were actually going to do those evil things, then there would be legit reasons to worry about the service. Changing the policy has little to do with the actual actions by the company.
That's why focusing on *the policy* is so ridiculous. The policy is meaningless. The actions are what matters.
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Re: Re: The reaction is not so crazy.
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Re: Re: The reaction is not so crazy.
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Here is part of the problem: That tone-deaf language they used? That's what every damn app in an app store sounds like. We may collect data type x. "For what?," you may damn well ask. But most of the time, no one is asking, not at this volume displayed over Spotify. And frequently, there is not other website or anywhere to click through to find out what app dev and service is really using that data for. And then there are those with some explanation, but contain clauses like, "but not limited to". Well fuck you very much.
And part of the problem behind that is consumers either did not care for a long time, or let these things stand unchallenged, or both. Because very few companies or devs are going to go out of their way to explain, even if they are being good stewards of your personal data. And the rest, well, they'll vacuum and monetize every bit of data they can get, and don't want you to know exactly what they take or how they might use it.
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What's broken are not privacy policies. What's broken is that operations are collecting all kinds of data that they should never attempt to collect because their chances of protecting it adequately are zero.
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On-demand permissions
One could take this further: let the app reference a photo and paint it on the screen without ever being able to read the data. I think iframes in the web security model work kind of like this (the enclosing page can't read the embedded one). But it's likely overkill.
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Re: On-demand permissions
The OS should also provide the option pretend to give access without actually providing any data (i.e. allowing an app access to "photos" then returning an empty list). Because some apps will fail to run if overtly denied, either intentionally or because of poor programming.
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Will do.
Done, and done.
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Re: Will do.
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"clarified in a blog post"
Were they lying then or are they lying now?
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Windows 10...
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Daniel Ek of Spotify yesterday shortly after my brilliant comment here, yanked the rug from under Msnick and abjectly apologized for violating privacy of users.
Of course Ek is lying: that'll all be put back in place slowly because Spotify is STILL losing money even with over 15 million paying and 50 million freeloaders subject to advertising! Spotify is clearly ready to monetize the hell out of even paid subscribers, but found that most people agree with me: streaming is not "social media"; just send me data, don't steal mine.
One of these days, as with NSA, the corporate spying will reach even the dimwits and they'll be sort of vaguely outraged. I don't claim that will stop it any more than NSA is even slowed, BUT as with Trump suddenly popping to top, there's a burbling undercurrent of common sense that elitist lurbles like Masnick simply don't understand, and it can suddenly form solid and lasting anger.
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Just because the CEO says it is all opt-in, the privacy policy should reflect that, and it doesn't.
The policy basically says: "Don't like these terms, don't use Spotify", also the settings page of Spotify doesn't allow you to opt in or out of anything, except the sharing with third parties, which had been there for a while.
I don't care what this CEO says. I canceled my Spotify account, because this was a giant breach into my privacy.
If it's opt-in have the privacy policy say so. This is clearly them backpedalling after the unanticipated backlash that Spotify received. If there hadn't been that backlash, do you really think they'd be saying "no worries, we meant it all as opt-in. Promise!"? Of course not.
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Users have to own their data
Having data without permission is certainly a sin, should be a crime. Using it without permission is certainly a crime.
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If you give companies the benefit of the doubt and they betray that trust, there is no way to uncollect the data - the cats out of the bag and the horse has bolted. So if you care about the data that's collected you have to assume the worst.
With recent (and not so recent) data breaches, collection of any unnecessary data should be a concern.
I'd normally expect Techdirt to take a more cautious/paranoid approach.
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They conciously paid someone to spend alot of time to program these features in.......its not a thing you have to program out............that alone, with whats being programmed, tells me that spotify doesnt give a shit about privacy, nor two shits about security and unforseen security exploits..........spotify and any other company who do or have shown this mentality, would have been better off releasing an advert theming it around this one line "dont buy me"
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If Techdirt has taught me anything, it's "assume the worst".
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