When Apple launched its MiniStore feature in iTunes 6.0.2, it sparked quite a serious privacy concern after it was reported to send back song information each time a song is played without warning the user in the software or license agreement. Now Apple has cleared this by notifying its customers about what happens behind the scenes with the new MiniStore feature as well as how to turn it off.
When the user selects songs in their music library while the MiniStore is enabled, information about this song along with some iTunes user data is sent back to Apple in order to obtain song recommendations. This happens even if the user selects music which they have not purchased from the iTunes music service. According to an Apple representative, this information is not stored or archived in any way. However, if the MiniStore is turned off, no information exchange will take place.
Apple has now released an updated version of iTunes which notifies the user when the MiniStore is activated for the first time. They mentioned that they listened to its users and in turn made this change to prevent any further potential concerns on this matter.
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The information exchange also includes a string of data linked to an iTunes customer's unique ID number, which is also used for other Apple accounts, such as the .Mac service and the Apple Developer Connection, computer experts found last week. An Apple representative said last week that the company did not store or archive any of the information from this MiniStore recommendation process. |
It is nice to see how quickly Apple cleared this issue up, but then again, after the privacy concerns of other DRM systems and particularly Spyware, it would look very bad on Apple if they let this concern continue. Then again, even if Apple does not track listening information (such as what songs the user plays and play count) back at its base, chances are that they have a log of what consumers purchase on their stores, so even without listening information, they can still work out the customer's interests based on their purchase history. On the other hand, this is really not much different than 'store cards' where the shops can collect purchase histories of its customers by luring customers into using their cards to collect points in order to get 'money off' vouchers.
Feel free to discuss about iTunes and other online music services on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues.
Source: ZD Net News - Security
