Slashdot Mirror
Apple Responds to iTunes Spying Allegations
daveschroeder writes "According to MacWorld and BoingBoing: 'An Apple spokesman (reliable word has it that it was Steve Jobs himself) told MacWorld that Apple discards the personal information that the iTunes Ministore transmits to Apple while you use iTunes. [...] Apple tells us that the information is not actually being collected. The data sent is used to update the MiniStore and then discarded.' Apple also has a knowledge base article, which apparently was available the day iTunes 6.0.2 was introduced, explaining the MiniStore behavior and how to disable it: 'iTunes sends data about the song selected in your library to the iTunes Music Store to provide relevant recommendations. When the MiniStore is hidden, this data is not sent to the iTunes Music Store.'" The discussion about this topic was fast and furious yesterday.
They could have avoided a lot of complaints if they had simply made a feature you could enable--not a feature you have to disable.
If you install a piece of software and it starts to gathering information about you, it's called spyware even if there's some magic button combination or option that turns it off. Until it is turned off, it's spyware. I don't understand why the default setting isn't "off" but I guess that was Apple's decision and now they'll catch flack for it.
My work here is dung.
If the Itunes Music Store is defaulted to ON, this is kind of sneaky since most people do not realize how to turn it off or if Apple saves their personal data or not.
If it is defaulted to OFF that is better, but if it is turned on it should have a pop-up telling you that your music selections are being tracked by Apple and how to turn it off.
The other issue is that people just don't trust large corporations to store/save/erase the data from their customers.
Just because Steve Jobs says its so, doesn't necessarily mean it IS so.
FYI to quickly disable it, hit Shift-Command-M
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"reliable word has it that it was Steve Jobs himself" then why not cite the source?
Everyone would still be angry no matter what Bill says. Because it's not, then everything is ok. BTW: I am a Linux guy... Making an observation...
The info it was supposedly spying on (what music you bought - it was used to make suggestions for other people) can be obtained perfectly easily by logging your purchases. For example Amazon offers me "suggested titles" and also uses my purchases to tell others "people who bought ... also bought ...", and they do that without using spyware to look at my bookshelf :-)
Now if iTunes spied on the music you ripped then that might be news, but still not that important. I mean all they'll do is say "people who have Take That mp3s also buy other tasteless crap" etc.
In short, yes, FUD.
Release the source of the server app and then we might believe you. We've all heard the "not actually collected" bit many times. Sony first tried to deny this particular privacy invasion in their rootkit, yet later they were caught out. Unique URLs combined with IPs, what more do you need?
Frankly, if I were writing such a service, logging some of the most financially valuable market research you get your hands on is a given. There wouldn't be any debate on the issue, you log it and sell it! And if you are morally sound, you offer it as an opt-on program and be honest about it.
Google scans your emails for ads, Amazon tracks your order history for recommendations, credit card company analyze your transactional pattern to offer balance transfer promotions....
it's all about tayloring for each customer.
provided Apple is not *sharing* this data with 3rd-parties, I don't find anything wrong with internal data mining.
Did you know every major web browser by default sends out info about your operating system name and version, your CPU type, usually your ISP, your browser and version and sometimes extras added onto your browser, and allows it to be logged on almost every single website you have ever visited. Most web browsers DO NOT ALLOW YOU TO CHANGE THIS.
So browsers are spyware too by the attitude some people are taking here.
In other words defining as spyware is not a black and white picture. It's shades of grey and in this situation I see iTunes as pretty white.
You are mistaken. It collects information about music in your library, not just what you've purchased.
You wouldn't get a car from Apple anyway. Get over it.
The onus is on you to protect yourself if you're so paranoid about your privacy. A harmless ad server using your collection to serve relevant ads is a reasonable thing to expect a company to do if you have a business relationship with them.
If you're this desperately paranoid about the evil corporations knowing what music you listen to, guess what? Apple already does, every time you buy a song through their store, and furthermore they have your real name, credit card number, and address also. You shouldn't be using this service.
This is reality. Time to deal with it.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I think it would be fun to see the reactions to the story now.
iTunes is evil because it drives acceptance among the masses for the abomination that is DRM. It is, of course nothing other than a way to spoonfeed this bitter poison to the unknowing. Once the public has been made used to accept iTunes, it's all the more easier to introduce and enforce even harder and more evil restrictions.
Shame on Apple. You are no better than those others. Bleh!
There is no excuse for supporting this. Fan boys may defend in in all ways that they want, that it is "needed" or "mild" or "the lesser of evils". You know what? It doesn't matter, all evils are evil. The obvious choice is to not choose any evil, it is false logic that dictates that any of them needs to be chosen.
Oh, and "shiny" does not good make, either.
I always thought malware was MALicious.
Spies work in secret. So does SPYware.
iTunes is neither malware nor spyware, and the people who claim it is are paranoid jackasses.
iTunes is doing this right in front of your face. I adamantly believe Apple should have included at least a dialog box at first launch of iTunes 6.02 informing users about the ministore, but I hardly consider it a breach of any sort of ethical barrier. The comparison to Gmail seem to be on the money... it's pretty much the same thing.
As sort of an aside, it's not a terrible feature, and it's not intrusive or nagging when you don't want it hanging around. I would have definitely preferred that there was at least a notification though.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
The issue is, that the music I rip personally, is none of Apple's business. They are free to recommend based on what I've purchased, or even browsed, but not what I've personally ripped. It's an invasion of privacy, especially if it's not mentioned in the EULA.
I can't help but think if this were ANY OTHER COMPANY than Apple, that the reaction would be universal condemnation.
Imagine if Sony's Connect player was upgraded and did this kind of thing, by default, and didn't mention a word about it? There would've been plans made to burn the CEOs at the stake and public bulldozings of Sony equipment. Of course, no one cares about Sony Connect so maybe that wasn't the best example.
The fact is, Apple is a corporation. They don't care about you. They don't come over and feed your pets when you're on vacation. They're in business to make money. By having these 'related artists', it might feed iTunes sales. And they slipped a feature in that phones home (actually, phones a third party) without being explicit about what is going on. Sure, it could be innocuous (and appears-- TODAY-- to be semi-innocuous) but no one knew yesterday except a mysterious connection was being made with no explanation.
As for everyone saying "When you buy something they can track your habits" -- of course they can. That's expected. What's not expected is a third party IP address obtaining information just as you're playing music with no explanation of what they're getting. Apple COULD HAVE been sending ANYTHING to them. That company could have been doing ANYTHING with that. It wasn't explicit.
Either way, they blew it and they got called on it. This is a privacy issue. Don't let your fanboy-ism get in the way of seeing that. The public reaction was a GOOD thing.
You do realise that the people who even know, let alone care, probably only make up 0.1% of the ITMS customer base, if that?
Which is why Apple didn't have any reason to make it opt-out. They figured they could better provide for their customers (99.9%) by putting everyone in the program, especially since they disclosed it at the time of release.
Nothing was sold, nothing was kept. What's the problem, right?
I understand your angle, but for me not every song I buy has the exact same rankings in my preferences. But how much I play them tends to indicate how much I like the songs, and this is data.
I'm not saying that Apple is my friend or I'm promoting these practices. But if done right, privacy can be ensured and introduce a level of service that can't be had without these information. For example, if a product never gets feedback, then how would the developers know how well it's doing? Similarily, Apple needs to know your "feedback" in order to know what you like or don't like. Similar to this, Amazon's recommendation system has more than once recommended to me something that I ended up liking (granted this is only based on what you're browsing), and I appreciate that (don't flame me, this is just my personal preference).
As for the giant warning, I agree that they should have warned the user, even if they turned on the data collection by default.
I want the tool to look at what I actually listen to, not just what I buy from them. It's far more likely to give me good suggestions that way.
This tool looks at what song is currently playing, and suggests possible other albums you might like. It's actually kind of nice, when you want to use it, and does nothing when you don't. Win.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If this were windows media player (again - it phoned home when you played DVDs, and was resoundly condemded in many circles) there wouldn't be a person on slashdot without a torch or pitchfork.
The fact that Apple is more often viewed as being product and customer centerned than a tyrannical monopoly is the only reason people will defend this kind of activity.
Apple was taking your personal information about your personal music being played on your personal computer and sending it back to themselves. Basic common courtesy dictates you ask people for personal information, you don't take it. The fact Jobs says he's not being malevolent is nice, but doesn't change the fact Apple somehow felt entitled to know what music you're playing on iTunes at any given time.
One dialog box, "Is it ok to send information about the music you're playing so we can better recommend purchases for you?" is all it takes. That one little question makes this a nice features instead of an invasion of privacy.
I don't mind that they are using my purchase data. What I DO mind is that the service insists on recommending crappy, overpromoted songs that I would never, ever like (and I can't get it to stop).
I turned off the service because I was tired of being told that I would like Will Smith's "Switch". This is just blatant promotion as I haven't bought anything remotely like it. In a way -- this IS using my data for 3rd parties by making me believe that there is some correlation between my tastes and overhyped crap that has flooded the national earspace.
If they are going to collect my data, they should, as a courtesy, do something smart with it.
Let me do a quick word swap here:
I want the spyware to look at what I actually look at, not just what I tell them too. It's far more likely to give me good suggestions that way.
This tool looks at what webpage is currently displayed, and suggests possible other products you might like. It's actually kind of nice, when you want to use it, and does nothing when you don't. Win.
Except that it's enabled by default and doesn't tell you that it's doing it in the first place.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Do you really think they would want to store that much information? Even if they did, if the request does not have any information specific to you, you have nothing to worry about.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
You're just putting ever more labels on it without actually considering what's going on. You are hysterically calling iTunes retrieving info about an artist from a server "invasion of privacy". Implication it's bad. But IS it bad? Of course it isn't. I ask again, what harm has it doing. If no harm then why is it bad?
Yes, Slashdot would be hysterical about it if it was Microsoft, but they are being hysterical about it when it's Apple, so what's your point there?
To be fair, it's possible all his ripped songs are obscure enough that they aren't in the iTunes database. iTunes showed "no match" for several of my more obscure tracks ripped from CD.
Comment of the year
I don't believe I'm reading this. Sony said that they weren't collecting the information sent back from their player software and nobody believed a word they said.
Of course they are storing it, why wouldn't they? Nobody outside of Apple can prove otherwise.
I've nothing against Apple but this new version of iTunes is Spyware pure and simple.