iTunes MiniStore spyware
p2p news / p2pnet: A new item in Apple’s latest iTunes upgrade is worrying a lot of people.
Sony BMG tried to sneak rootkit Digital Restriction Management applications hidden on music CDs onto customer’s computers and is still paying dearly for it.
Now, iTunes 6.0.2 includes a new application author, bloggist and Apple fan Kirk McElhearn has described as "invasive" and which others have labelled "spyware".
The new iTunes ‘MiniStore’ apparently tracks the songs you’re playing and, "makes music download recommendations whenever people click on songs stored on their own computers, even those not purchased through iTunes," says the San Jose Mercury News.
Apple? Spyware? Could it be true? And, If it is, How could Apple stoop so low? – are probably the two dominant questions.
On the first, it certainly looks as if there is, at the least, an application which reports back on what iTunes users are doing.
And as to the second, a company capable of using teenaged RIAA victims in a blackly cynical iPod promo, and which can sue Apple-friendly journalists for doing what journalists do, dig for information and then report it, is certainly capable of surreptitious data mining.
Included in the iTunes 6.0.2 update is the MiniStore which critics say, "tracks a person’s listening behavior with a unique identification number, and does so without notifying consumers," says the story.
"What bothers me most is the fact that Apple generally doesn’t do this sort of thing,” it has McElhearn, who’s published several books on Macintosh computers, saying. "It’s kind of a letdown. Someone said, ‘It’s as if someone breaks into your house and makes a list of the books you have’."
The monitoring program can be turned off and Apple says it doesn’t save or store information used to create recommendations for the MiniStore, but, "The problem isn’t so much the data gathering, but that Apple didn’t spell out what it was doing and why, the Mercury News quotes Institute for the Future researcher Alex Soojung-Kim Pang as saying.
"Certainly, the basic principle that information about us can be put to good use for us is something people buy into,” Pang said. "The problem is, Apple didn’t tell anyone.”
The MiniStore spyware issue has, "raised eyebrows particularly high in the community of Apple computer users, though the new feature is also included in the Windows-based iTunes," says CNET News. "Macintosh users have typically not been exposed to many of the advertising-supported or adware programs that are common in the Windows world, and which routinely raise privacy concerns through poorly disclosed data exchanges.
"Indeed, in 1999, RealNetworks was sued for releasing a version of its RealJukebox that included a ‘Global Unique Identifying Number,’ which identified a listener’s specific copy of the player without initially disclosing this feature in a privacy policy. RealNetworks said it had added the identifying feature as a way to ‘offer valuable personalized services’ but later removed it after lawsuits and customer criticism ensued."
Some bloggers and online sources have dismissed the exposure of the data transfer software as a, "typical feature of music-playing software," says CNET, adding:
"However, some bloggers are calling for a more specific disclosure of exactly what data the iTunes software is sending back to Apple – and what it is being used for."
Stay tuned.
Also See:
described as "invasive" – Does iTunes phone home?, January 12, 2005
San Jose Mercury News – ITunes tracking upsets users, January 14, 2005
cynical iPod promo – Pepsi-iTunes Super Bowl ad blasted, January 30, 2004
Apple-friendly journalists – New Apple Asteroid trouble, September 13, 2005
CNET News – Apple’s iTunes raises privacy concerns, January 12, 2005
January 14th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Ironic isn’t it that one of the main points the RIAA makes against using p2p services is viruses and spyware.
Looks like their supposedly legal services come prepackaged with spyware, heh.
January 15th, 2006 at 2:50 am
I’ve emailed Apple several times REQUESTING this specific feature, so I’m glad to see it’s finally able to see the light of day. Getting recommendations only on music I’ve bought from iTMS when I’ve got over 5k other songs on my computer from the CD collection I built in all the years before iTMS has been pretty … inaccurate and frustrating. I’m more than happy to share information about what I listen to the most. If it uses historical data as well, even better, since I’ve been using iTunes on my PCs and Macs since day one.
I definitely agree that it should have been spelled out more clearly than it was; in most of my emails to Apple I suggested that they launch it as a “new feature” or “improvement” with a logo and a catchy name so when people first hear about it, it will be in a positive light of what it does for them (better recommendations) rather than a negative light (see: this paranoid article). Yes, the corporations want information about our behaviour so that they can get us to spend more of our money on their products — but the more information they have about us, the more likely they money we’re spending is on something we REALLY want, rather than just whatever they decided got the advertising dollars this year (see: the publishing industry). iTMS probably has 20k songs in its 2m+ song library that I’d love, but without better recommendations, there’s no way for me to find them … and try to find the $20k it would cost to buy them.