I love iTunes because it’s a clean music player. But no amount of clean [user interface] is worth surrendering my privacy for — I wouldn’t buy a stereo that phoned home to Panasonic and told it what I was listening to; I wouldn’t buy a shower radio that delivered my tuning preferences to Blaupunkt. I certainly am not comfortable with Apple shoulder-surfing me while I listen to digital music, particularly if they’re doing so without my meaningful, informed consent and without disclosing what they intend on doing with that data.
Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing, iTunes update spies on your listening and sends it to Apple?
The update of iTunes released two weeks ago includes a new feature in the Music Store, called the MiniStore, that recommends music based on a user’s buying and listening history. Apple neither announced nor included this addition in its disclaimer at first, but they responded to criticism online by adding a disclaimer and reassuring users that the information is not saved.
This story was first reported by Marc A. Garrett on since1968. You can see some debate here.
Personally, I am quite upset with Apple’s decision-making in this case, and I hope others are as well.
No company, even one I admire as much as Apple (I did spend nearly five years of my life working there), should start transmitting personal data over the Internet without my explicit permission and a clear explanation of how it’s being used. In addition, if a company is collecting this information, I have a right to know exactly what’s being collected, and what the company plans on doing with my personal information.
Robert Griffiths, Macworld, Eyeing the iTunes MiniStore
You can disable the store. Thats one option.
Also, while I understand completely the desire to NOT have my personal information collected and harvested, sometimes I consider the amount of info they get doing this and start to doubt they can ever really make any sense out of it or find anything truely personal about me. They might know what I listen to but theyve got to sort through millions upon millions of users.. so… it becomes like winning the lottery.
I am a persian american and one of your listeners. my comment to tonight show is why do you always saying people of Iran when all these destructive problems are made by the Goverment of Iran. the goverment which is very fanatic and narrow minded. The election of president of Iran was not a real election and he was elected by cheating . they brought votes from pakistan and afganestan by plane over night . he is the one who killed over 10, 000 students most of the people of Iran are as frusterated as the rest of the world. there shouldn’t be any negotiation with this goverment . they are bunch of theives who by the name of their religion destroyed many lives and still doing it. as far as the hostages , I wish you will remember the fact that the whole 444 days happened since president Ragen and his people had a meeting with the Iranian’s temporary goverment at that time for the good of his election.