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Daniel Ek and Minecraft creator Notch debate Spotify privacy policy
- sbarre 11y agoAs long as I can opt out of providing access to those features (photos, contacts, sensors) and still use the app, then I will do that, even if that means I get "reduced functionality" or however they spin it. I just want to listen to my music, I don't care about social features or anything like that. But if I can only use the app by giving access to those features, even as a paid subscriber, then I will absolutely cancel my paid account and look to other services.
- Rezo 11y agoOnce you've given those permissions on Android by installing/upgrading Spotify, you have no guarantee that the app won't use them without your knowledge. Any options to limit the features from inside the app itself are purely cosmetic from an access control point of view.
- gpmcadam 11y agoNot sure about Android, but at least on iOS, you aren't prompted to allow access to photos until the you attempt to use the feature in most cases, which is what Spotify are arguing for here. But you're right, once you've granted permission it's up to the app to be responsible. Makes me think the OS should provide a 'Just this once' button when being asked to allow access to extra permissions.
- lucaspottersky 11y agoThat would be nice. Otherwise, soon I'll need to use a "throw-away" phone just for the apps since most of them usually require more permissions than I'd like to share.
- mazesc 11y agoTrue, it's really more of an Android issue, than a Spotify issue.
- otis_inf 11y agoNot really, it's a limitation Spotify has to deal with if they want to offer 'services' which require these permissions. Access to photos is not needed to stream music, last time I checked ;) That Android has 'one-ticket-for-everything-LOL' security flags is sad, but that doesn't mean Spotify then thus has the responsibility to work with that and if they are so serious regarding privacy of their users, offer a way to make me control what they can see / do, however I can't: at install I have to give permissions and after that I can't control what they can see / do or not, not in the app, not in my account, nowhere. I just have to trust them. That last part is a bit difficult at the moment.
- wlesieutre 11y agoIf you're on iOS you always have to opt-in to give an app access to photos or contacts. On Android, you can't do anything about it now, but it should be moving to a similar system with Android 6 (marshmallow). Neither allows you to restrict access to accelerometers, light sensors, etc as far as I am aware. If they siphon up your contact list and store it before Marshmallow comes out, blocking it later won't do you much good.
- criley2 11y agoMany custom Android roms have had deep per-app permissions for years (CM is basically built around it at this point), and previous versions of Android loosely supported per-app permissions through the App Ops app.
- mike-cardwell 11y agoYou can get this on Android already if you install Cyanogenmod.
- wlesieutre 11y agoYeah, but Sony locked up my phone's low light noise reduction behind some nasty DRM system and if I switch off the stock OS it turns the camera into a huge piece of shit. Remind me to not buy a phone from Sony again.
- sp332 11y agoWasn't loading for me, here's a cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fmusically.com%2F2015%2F08%2F21%2Fdaniel-ek-minecraft-notch-spotify-privacy-policy%2F http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache...
- outsidetheparty 11y agoThank you, I was having the same problem.
- kevando 11y agoI like seeing these conversations and hope to see more public figures debate them in the open like this.
- teh_klev 11y agoHave they removed their Contact Form (apparently the way to perma-close your account)?: https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/how-can-i-close-my-spotify-account/ https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/how-can-i-close-my-sp... Yet clicking on the "Contact Form" link returns me right to: https://support.spotify.com/uk/contact-spotify-support/ https://support.spotify.com/uk/contact-spotify-support/ Wash, rinse, repeat. Digging through their forums I eventually located this: https://support.spotify.com/us/close/ https://support.spotify.com/us/close/
- Jgrubb 11y agoJust had the same experience. edit: thanks for the link.
- smoyer 11y agoI didn't cancel my account (like Notch did) but I did remove it from my phone. It should be safe to continue using on my desktop unless they're mining data from my computer too.
- Jtsummers 11y agoShould be safe since they don't need to ask your permission to access photos on your computer.
- smoyer 11y agoIt would probably be more financially rewarding to try to break the encryption on my password vault since I also stash my credit card information in there. I have a pretty boring life, so my photos wouldn't help them much (plus I don't have a Facebook account so where would they even use them?).
- SlashmanX 11y agoNotch seems insanely out of touch and paranoid here.
- lawlessone 11y agoThey basically want access to everything on your phone. are you comfortable with that?
- SlashmanX 11y ago1) I don't use Spotify. 2) I know how permissions work on mobile devices, therefore I know exactly why they need access to all this new stuff and I know the permission can be denied if I wanted to
- mbrutsch 11y ago> I know how permissions work on mobile devices, therefore I know exactly why they need access to all this new stuff Those two things are not even remotely related. Your knowledge of the permissions on a mobile device sheds exactly zero light on what is going on in the minds of the Spotify employees who participated in this decision.
- SlashmanX 11y agoI know that they need location access for the running feature. I know that they need access to photos to allow changing of profile pic. That's what's going through their minds "We want to add this feature, but hey wait, we need a new permission and we'll have to update our privacy policy accordingly"
- mfjordvald 11y agoThis is entirely possible yes. I have also worked with people for whom that was just the public reason and the less nice uses were very much on their mind privately. Comes down to whether you trust corporations or not.
- criley2 11y agoNotch has a bad habit of getting caught up in drama and making loud but seemingly stupid statements about a situation before all of the information is out there. Every time a company updates their app permissions, we get this kind of permission-hysteria. THEY WANT TO DOWNLOAD ALL OF MY PHOTOS!!! Well, actually, they want you to be able to set a photo as the cover of a playlist, and there is no difference between "Allow user to upload 1 photo" and "Have access to all of users photo" in terms of mobile permissions.\ THEY WANT ACCESS TO MY GPS!! Well, actually, they're rolling out a Run feature already implemented on iOS, and, as always, you can disable GPS or customize its functionality on both platforms pretty deeply. Every permissions update we get these histrionics. Notch should have the foresight to step back and listen before jumping in with a million followers.
- mrspeaker 11y agoEh, how do we know what they want? We have to give over access to all our info and trust they'll only use the bits they'll say? This is a problem of the permissions systems rather than of the company - but weather Notch is over-reacting or not is kind of moot: “With your permission, we may collect information stored on your mobile device, such as contacts, photos, or media files. Local law may require that you seek the consent of your contacts to provide their personal information to Spotify, which may use that information for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy.” It's hard to know what they really want and what they say they want - we need to fix the way we let apps use our data.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wrongc0ntinent 11y agoNice of them to allow you to be legally responsible for sharing your contacts. With them.
- mbrutsch 11y ago> Well, actually, they want you to be able to set a photo as the cover of a playlist, and there is no difference between "Allow user to upload 1 photo" and "Have access to all of users photo" in terms of mobile permissions. I think Notch's response is quite accurate: “But I do understand how easy it is to make up small features to require access to the entire phone so you can sell your customers.” Two things can be true at the same time. Just because the public, published reason is innocuous doesn't mean there's not some MBA just waiting to get his hands on that data.
- lqdc13 11y agoI think Spotify guy is right. If you give photos access to twitter, it is not much of a stretch to give it to the Music app. The problem is the way permissions work. You should be able to give temporary individual permissions to each app for each service to only a portion of your storage. For example, not all photos forever, but just these photos. The way the permissions currently work on Android is insane. It is also insane that people are okay with sharing all of this information with facebook, twitter, verizon, google, lyft, uber, yelp and 50 other apps.
- masklinn 11y ago> The problem is the way permissions work. You should be able to give temporary individual permissions to each app for each service to only a portion of your storage. For example, not all photos forever, but just these photos. That is much better handled by dedicated pickers running in isolated processes which can give temporary access to explicitly selected datasets without the application having any access rights to even those data in the long term. Surely Android has some sort of media picker intent which lets users select media without giving applications "background access" to all your media library, no? Unless the application is image edition software, I see no reason for it to get any passive access to the user's images.
- lqdc13 11y agoPretty sure they can get the photos whenever they want once you have the app installed and running in the background. Otherwise, how would automatic photos backup work? I haven't written any Android apps though so I don't know the details.
- masklinn 11y ago> Pretty sure they can get the photos whenever they want once you have the app installed and running in the background. If it has permissions to access all files at any time sure, point is there's no reason for the application to have that, and it's an opt-in.
- smegel 11y agoThe truly rotten egg here is Android (and Google by extension). Why a user cannot elect to nominally provide permissions to an app, but restrict the content of different grants (so an app may see an empty phone book by default or an empty Pictures folder) is beyond me. It borders on abusive.
- mcintyre1994 11y agoNo excuse for the ridiculous time it's taken, but this is coming in M.
- MatekCopatek 11y agoIs it really? I know they would allow you to specify the permissions yourself, but i think the guy above you is talking about "fake" permissions (the app "sees" your emails, but there are none)
- tokenizerrr 11y agoYou cannot do any of that on a computer either. As far as I know neither Windows, Mac and Linux have any kind of permission system for the applications they run. Sure, you can hack something together using sandboxing/containers/VMs, but none of the operating systems provide this by default. There have been alternate Android roms which provide the features you speak of, as well.
- wes-exp 11y ago> neither Windows, Mac and Linux have any kind of permission system Actually, OS X now has the beginnings of an iOS-like permission system for location services and access to your contacts.
- bariumbitmap 11y agoFreeBSD jails? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating-system-level_virtualization#Implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating-system-level_virtual...
- ErikAugust 11y agoYou could switch to the Apple service. Because, you know, Apple's got all your stuff anyway.