iTunes is Malware?

Moby writes "On the heels of the big Apple love-in that is Macworld comes some interesting but alarming news. Recently a few blogs have started to indicate that iTunes is tracking your music preferences and using that data to recommend other songs from iTMS. The article provides a good overview, with some recommendations of its own. Basically, iTunes is tracking your music and sending the data back to Apple servers. This info is then used to advertise songs that may be to your tastes. A convenient feature, perhaps, but it raises concerns over privacy."

Comments

Extremely easy to disable, and more info

[daveschroeder]

First of all, I don't know how this qualifies as iTunes suddenly being "malware", but anyway...

Edit -> Hide MiniStore (or shift-command-M)

No information of any kind is sent when the MiniStore is disabled.

What iTunes 6.0.2 is doing:

Sending information about the currently playing track to Apple, and then displaying information related to that track in the iTunes Music Store in the MiniStore pane. It is not broadly "tracking your music preferences".

Further - though we admittedly don't know this since Apple doesn't explain how it is using the data - there is no proof that Apple is doing anything but merely changing the MiniStore display based on what track you are listening to (which is very likely exactly what they're doing); not aggregating or "tracking your music preferences".

iTunes isn't doing this surreptitiously, either: the MiniStore pane clearly actively changes depending on what track you have selected. One would presume this does not happen via magic or the dark arts.

I'd love to have comment from Apple, and a clear presentation that information is being sent to Apple for x purpose, and a clear option to allow - or disallow - such use. I've looked through the iTunes 6.0.2 license and do not see any such guidance.

Granted, the MiniStore pane is present by default, but it can be disabled as easily as is described above.

I realize many people think this represents "going over the line"; but is there ever any instance where datamining to match items you might be interested in to your interests is acceptable? Is there any value to having this be the default state in certain instances where it could be significantly helpful?

iTunes is Malware?

[SageMadHatter]

No. It is not.
Malware definition

Perhaps the news submitter ment to use the term spyware?

But it can be disabled trivially.

[Paradox]

This new feature puts up a little pane in the iTunes window that shows songs related to the song you are currently playing. There is no indication that I can find that the iTunes Music Store is actually storing that information. It's unlikely that Apple could store that kind of volume of information, given that it happens on selection, not on playing.

But I don't think people should worry. You can simply press one button and iTunes stops doing it (the disclosure button on the left side of the bottom button bar). It's pretty simple to verify that your computer isn't sending any data on track selection or play when that window is not added, so in general you only get this information when you ask for it. Further, all it has to go on are the identifying tags in the music, and these can be easily changed, so it's not something that could ever hold up in any sane court if someone came at you with a lawsuit. Then again, sanity doesn't seem to be a prerequisite these days, so our milage may vary.

Don't get me wrong, I am not to happy about this feature because it's effectively embedding ads in iTunes. They're pretty well targeted, but they're ads. Still, the article seemed to overreact to what iTunes is doing.

It's there

[metamatic]

The button is the fourth from the right at the bottom of the iTunes window. It turns off the Mini Store.