Can We Add Our Family Who Live Away Spotify Family Plan

Spotify volition be requesting location data for Premium Family subscribers.

Angela Lang/CNET

Spotify knows a lot almost its users -- their musical tastes, their most listened-to artists and their summer anthems. Spotify will also want to know where you lot live or to obtain your location information. It's part of an try to detect fraud and corruption of its Premium Family programme.

Premium Family unit is a $xv-a-month plan for up to 6 people. The only condition is that they all live at the same address. But the streaming music giant is concerned almost people abusing that programme to pay equally little every bit $2.fifty for its services. And then in August, the company updated its terms and conditions for Premium Family subscribers, requiring that they provide location data "from time to time" to ensure that customers are actually all in the same family.

You accept thirty days to cancel after the new terms went into upshot, which depends on where you are. The family programme terms rolled out first on Aug. 19 in Ireland and on Sept. 5 in the The states.

The company tested this terminal year and asked for verbal GPS coordinates only ended the pilot plan after customers balked, according to TechCrunch. Now it intends on rolling the location data requests out fully, reigniting privacy concerns and raising the question of how much is besides much when it comes to your personal information.

"The changes to the policy allow Spotify to arbitrarily use the location of an individual to define if they continue to reside at the same address when using a family account, and it's unclear how often Spotify volition query users' devices for this information," said Christopher Weatherhead, applied science lead for UK watchdog group Privacy International, adding that there are "worrying privacy implications."

Location data is peculiarly sensitive, equally information technology hands out information on where you've been, giving companies and advertisers details well-nigh your personal life. Even when the data is anonymized, location information is oft so specific that it but takes a few steps to effigy out who the coordinates are linked to. In New York, lawmakers are considering a bill banning apps from sharing people'south location data within the urban center.

With 108 1000000 subscribers, Spotify is the ascendant force in streaming music. Its closest competitor, Apple Music, has threescore million subscribers.

Spotify, whose premium service doesn't serve up ads, maintains that it's only using your location data for verification.

"This data is encrypted and can be edited by the programme owner every bit needed," the company said in a statement. "The location data that is collected during Premium Family business relationship creation is just used by Spotify for that purpose."

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Once y'all sign upward for the family plan, Spotify will ask those on the plan to provide the company a home accost using Google Maps. Every person added to the programme will have to do the same, or enable location services for Spotify on their devices, the company said. Spotify said it doesn't use that home location data for advertizing and that it doesn't shop the data for internal employ.

"One time verification of a family unit member'due south home address is completed, we exercise non shop their location data or track their location at any time," a Spotify spokesperson said.

Merely there are some flaws in this methodology. Information technology overlooks families that aren't living together, whether information technology's because kids are off to college or they have separated parents. It's likewise overlooking the privacy concerns with giving your location data away, experts said.

And this won't be a one-time scenario. The discover said that Spotify could ask for location data to check for fraud "from time to fourth dimension" but didn't specify when or how frequently those checks would happen.

While Google has its own privacy concerns, privacy experts suggest that information technology's better to use the Google Maps option rather than turning on your real-fourth dimension location information for Spotify.

"That does seem to entail giving upwards quite a bit of personal information," said April Doss, head of the cybersecurity and privacy law practice at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr and the National Security Agency's former acquaintance general counsel for intelligence law. "Consequently, it's important that Spotify has created a less intrusive pick for users, with manual data entry to residence location rather than ongoing monitoring of the person's location."

A Google spokesman pointed to the Maps Platform's privacy policy, which notes that clients like Spotify need to have complete consent to use location information from customers.

The alter as well brings up privacy concerns for children who are on their parents' family unit plans. You have to be over 13 years old to utilize Spotify, only the location information requirements nevertheless gear up off alarms for privacy experts.

"It seems excessive to permanently rail individuals for this purpose," Weatherhead said. "Additionally, it poses the problem of Spotify inadvertently tracking children and minors, who aren't legally able to consent or object."

Correction, Sept. 12 at 6:55 a.thousand. PT: Spotify has already begun its location data requests starting on Sept. five for customers in the United states of america.

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Source: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotify-wants-to-know-where-you-live-and-will-be-checking-in/