Is Pandora crossing the line with your personal data? That's the accusation of a recent lawsuit against Apple, Pandora, and a number of other top apps, and there's more to this than you might expect. The suit, which currently seeks class action status, alleges that various iPhone and iPad apps are slyly collecting and selling a range of stats and personal data to ad networks.
At first blush, this looks like another privacy alarm, though judgefor yourself. The filing points to a nefarious role by the Unique Device Identifier (UDID) on iPhones and iPads, essentially a “supercookie" that can track all sorts of activity. In turn, a lot of that activity is being shuttled to third-party advertising networks—that is, according to the lawsuit.
Then comes the usual cocktail of personal violations. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of David Lalo by KamberLaw LLC, also includes stats like “location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views," in addition to the actions of the users themselves.
But wait, there's more—a lot more. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal has uncovered a number of privacy violations by a range of apps, with Pandora specifically singled out. “Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks," the Journal alleged.
The UDID cannot be turned off by the user. And what is Pandora saying about all this? “We use listener data in accordance with our privacy policy," a Pandora spokesperson told the Journal, leaving it at that. Looks like there's lots more ahead on this one...
At first blush, this looks like another privacy alarm, though judgefor yourself. The filing points to a nefarious role by the Unique Device Identifier (UDID) on iPhones and iPads, essentially a “supercookie" that can track all sorts of activity. In turn, a lot of that activity is being shuttled to third-party advertising networks—that is, according to the lawsuit.
Then comes the usual cocktail of personal violations. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of David Lalo by KamberLaw LLC, also includes stats like “location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views," in addition to the actions of the users themselves.
But wait, there's more—a lot more. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal has uncovered a number of privacy violations by a range of apps, with Pandora specifically singled out. “Both the Android and iPhone versions of Pandora, a popular music app, sent age, gender, location and phone identifiers to various ad networks," the Journal alleged.
The UDID cannot be turned off by the user. And what is Pandora saying about all this? “We use listener data in accordance with our privacy policy," a Pandora spokesperson told the Journal, leaving it at that. Looks like there's lots more ahead on this one...
