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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."
What is it doing that is malicious?
Spyware, sure, but not malware.
-stefan
//FIXME: Bad
Ever used an Internet browser? That sends data to various servers, does that constitute a risk to your privacy? Probably, but it doesn't make Firefox, IE & Opera 'malware', in the same way that even if iTunes is sending data to Apple, it's not necessaraly malware.
Kneejerk reactions like this are unsupprising given the current culture of "Oh my god, the've got my name and they know what music I like!". If you are conserned about your privacy with regard to a company or service, I suggest you start with their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy - If you don't like them, you don't have to use their service.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
It would be interesting to re-phrase the question and replace "iTunes" with "Windows Media Player" and see what kinds of responses are generated by the Slashdot crowd.
Sample headline: "It seems the most recent update to Microsoft's bundled media application Windows Media Player is mining the music tracks that a user plays and sending that data back to Microsoft in order to present the user with similar tracks from the MSN Music Store. What Microsoft does with this data after Music Store recommendations are made is unknown."
Will the apologists for Apple and their data mining stand up in this case as well?
Interesting question, anyway.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Right from www.apple.com/itunes "while you're browsing your own music, the MiniStore will automatically show you more music from your favorite artists that you can find at the iTunes Music Store." If you don't like it, don't use it. It's not being deceptive about what it does, which is why it's not spyware. You didn't bother reading what the software clearly states it does, and now your mad about it. How does that make sense.
You know if this was Sony or Microsoft there would be howls of anger and the pitchforks and torches would already be out. Apple does it and; "hey, they're swell guys but I don't know how comfortable I am about this".
If the crack dealer I see on the corner were to pull a gun out of his pocket, I'd go for cover. If my brother pulled a gun out of his pocket I'd probably say something like, "hey what is that gun you're carrying?" The reason for this is because I know my brother and have some level of trust in him. I might say, "hey put that away" if I felt it was inappropriate. I feel that what Apple has done is inappropriate. They should have issued a privacy policy that explains what they do and don't do with the information they are collecting. They should have had the feature disabled by default (even if they included a big "enable ministore suggestions" button). That said, Sony has a history of doing unethical things, as does MS. Apple has a much better record. Thus, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are probably not data mining. If that proves not to be the case, I'll be more skeptical of them in the future.
I can't believe people are focusing on this, however. I mean sure, this is pseudo-spyware (not malware), but Apple just released machines that implement EFI. I'm much more concerned about the "trusted computing" possibilities of the new firmware than I am about iTunes. One might let them collect data about the songs listened to using freeware they distribute (with an easy option to turn it off). The other might allow them to restrict your actions on the hardware you buy, after the purchase. I'm tentatively giving them the benefit of the doubt there too, but it is certainly a much more pressing concern than iTunes phoning home.
Usually, the way to handle something like this is to leave the feature disabled, unless you've asked the user or they explicitly enable it. The problem is that it is enabled by default, without asking the user.