Spotify quickly apologizes due to privacy changes causing anger

“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”.

In a blog post boldly titled “SORRY,” Spotify chief Daniel Elk says, “We should have done a better job in communicating what these policies mean and how any information you choose to share will – and will not – be used.”

If you connect to the Service using credentials from a Third Party Application (as defined in the Terms and Conditions of Use) (e.g., Facebook), you authorise us to collect your authentication information, such as your username and encrypted access credentials.

The problem is, if you don’t agree to the terms listed below, Spotify won’t let you use its music service. CEO Daniel Ek quickly acknowledged the mistake though, and in a follow-up blog post he explains all the new features this policy will allow the company to add in the future. Spotify had said in response that the changes to its privacy policy would help it “tailor improved user experience”. Spotify, long considered one of the so called good guys of the Internet, is finding this out the hard way after making some key changes to its privacy policy. Data that is given to marketers and advertisers is “de-identified”, he said, so your individual information isn’t linked to your identity.

Ek further clarified that access to users’ photos would help them in personalising a playlist by having a custom image or a new profile pic.

The company will collect various sorts of information, which is stored in the user’s mobile device, including contacts too.

Ek notes that users don’t have to share every piece of their digital lives with Spotify if they don’t wish to. Also, the company will collect information from Global Positioning System and from other sensors such as movement of the users, the speed of their movement and so on.

This nearly makes me want to pay for Apple Music, if their privacy policy is even marginally better, but apparently this all has a goal . Perhaps most troubling, Spotify doesn’t just want this data for its own use; it’s also ready to share the information with advertising partners. Ride-sharing app Uber for example got under fire last fall for asking users for the right to access a plethora of data sources, including a user’s camera, Wifi network names and caller IDs.