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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."
So? BFD. Certainly there are cases where privacy is a concern, and companies are harvesting personal data for ill gains. But is this really one of them? Calling it malware makes it sound like Apple was so sinister. It's no worse than Amazon tracking your purchase habbits and using it to suggest what other shoppers must buy, or the fact that you have to register with CDDB now, so they could potentially track what music you listen to. Of course the article doesn't even offer proof that the data is even retained by Apple, nor that there it is directly associated with your personal information. It could just be using the immediately selected song to suggest similar music, not a full history.
And what exactly sinister use will Apple have for this horribly damaging data, anyway?
Plus, it's so easy to disable. Get over it already.
I'm all for privacy, but this doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. Nobody bitches about Amazon customizing their storefront based on past purchases. Well, maybe they do, but I don't hang around with tinfoil-hat-types.
My point is that every time I go to the iTunes music store, I think, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if the store knew about my collection and taylored the site to my tastes. I really don't care to see the latest offering from Kelly Clarkson.
I guess the ideal thing would be if I were given a choice. I didn't see any mention of that in the article. To me, that would be one way to satisfy both crowds. I guess I'll have to fire up iTunes and see if I'm being "watched".
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Then it should be disabled by default or you should be asked (in plain English) if you want it enabled when the program starts for the first time after update. If you say no it shouldn't ever ask you again nor should it track your listening preferences.
You don't know that it's "tracking" anything, even now.
On the other hand, we don't know it's not doing that, since Apple doesn't tell us.
No. Absolutely not.
It's never ok for an external entity to attempt to match things to your interests? Okay, possibly a different philosophical outlook on things, here...
Especially when they didn't ask my permission first.
Agreed. But, as I said, it's not exactly a secret that it's doing something to be able to actively change the MiniStore display.
Sure, Apple's trying to sell something. But it can also be argued, correctly, that this improves the user experience with iTunes (aside from the broader privacy argument). I do, however, agree that Apple should have made this clearly known on the first launch, and given an option at the same time to simply disable it.
I want them to track my music listening habits. Maybe if they notice the bands I listen to, they will make deals to distribute music from Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords artists. . . 'cause currently iTunes have almost nothing I want to listen to.
Yea, I'm about as worried about Apple knowing my musical tastes as I am about Amazon knowing my reading preferences. As in... not at all.
If you're the type that's worried about Amazon and Google tracking you with cookies and such, then yea, it's nice to know about this ( and the fact that they don't track you when the mini-store is hidden ). I guess I'm just not that paranoid... I'm actually quite happy to tell everyone what kind of music I like. I'd even tell you, if I thought you wanted to know.
I'm frankly much more paranoid about Google keeping records of my searches and gmail messages, but even that... I mean, if you use credit cards, Apple knowing your music preferences is the least of your worries.
I once signed my real name and number on one of those, and I got zilch that I could tell was from filling it out. No mail, no phonecalls ... nothing.
But as I've read more about the grocery store industry I'm thinking more and more that those 'club' cards aren't much about tracking consumers as in identifying the gross number of unique shoppers that use the club card.
The reason being, is that the way grocery stores work is a little counter-intuitive. You would think that some shopper for safeway goes out, finds some variety of products , then places them on the shelves in such a way that the more profitable are chest level.
The actual mechanics are much more complex. Food suppliers will actually pay money to have their products on the ends of the isles, in the best position on the space. I'm pretty sure there's a little buying and selling on the part of Safeway, but I suspect the real situation is more like the suppliers are renting the space out to put their products on.
The store brand then is the way the store makes money on the actual product not on just the shelf space.
Therefore, the club cards are something that safeway charges for. Products become club specials, not when safeway finds a crate going bad, or found a good deal, but when the supplier pays safeway to put them on the club. So, Safeway really doesn't care about the information behind the card, (My last couple of club cards I got, they just handed me a new card, I didn't have to fill out anything). All safeway cares about is how often the card is used, so they can tell their suppliers how great it would be if they put their products on the club card.
I've bought about 10 songs from the iStore, but have about 3000mp3s in my iTunes. The recommendations I've gotten are pretty obviously from those 10 songs I bought. Don't know if they know about my 3000mp3s, but they're not making recommendations from it right now.
I use Little Snitch on OS X which monitors applications trying to go out over the network and asks what I want to do about it before it will let the app do its thing. From what I can see, Itunes uses port 80 to do its thing. With Little Snitch I could make a rule to not let Itunes do this, but this would disable the itunes store. Not that I use it anyway after they expired all of my free pepsi points without warning...
Grocery stores can, and DO, track individual purchases. Recently, a fire fighter was suspected in an arson because his card had shown as purchasing the accelerant used in the fire. It wasn't until someone else confessed that he was cleared. The DEA has subpoenaed records looking for people purchasing large numbers of baggies. A large grocery store, in the aftermath of 9/11, turned over to the FBI their entire loyalty database of purchases and purchasers, without so much as a subpoena, to "help find and fight terrorists."
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