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Folks Suing the iGiant: iTunes 'Purchase Histories Sold' to Highest Bidders

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:16AM   
from the profit-uber-alles dept.

martyb writes:

Apple's Privacy Schtick is Just an Act, say Folks Suing the iGiant: iTunes 'Purchase Histories Sold' to Highest Bidders:

Apple has been hit with a class-action complaint in the US accusing the iGiant of playing fast and loose with the privacy of its customers.

The lawsuit [PDF], filed this month in a northern California federal district court, claims the Cupertino music giant gathers data from iTunes – including people's music purchase history and personal information – then hands that info over to marketers in order to turn a quick buck.

"To supplement its revenues and enhance the formidability of its brand in the eyes of mobile application developers, Apple sells, rents, transmits, and/or otherwise discloses, to various third parties, information reflecting the music that its customers purchase from the iTunes Store application that comes pre-installed on their iPhones," the filing alleged.

"The data Apple discloses includes the full names and home addresses of its customers, together with the genres and, in some cases, the specific titles of the digitally-recorded music that its customers have purchased via the iTunes Store and then stored in their devices' Apple Music libraries."

[...] Additionally, the lawsuit alleges the Music APIs Apple includes in its developer kit can allow third-party devs to harvest similarly detailed logs of user activity for their own use, further violating the privacy of iTunes customers.

The end result, the complaint states, is that Cook and Co are complacent in the illegal harvesting and reselling of personal data, all while pitching iOS and iTunes as bastions of personal privacy and data security.

If you are not paying for it, you are the product. But, just because you are paying for it, does not prevent you from being the product, too.

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Original Submission

• Re:Read the lawsuit Re:Read the lawsuit (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 31 2019, @12:01AM (1 child)

  by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday May 31 2019, @12:01AM (#849510) Journal

  The headlines they are using for this lawsuit are a little sensational. It really centers around 3rd party apps having access to the music library on devices they run on. There is no proof given in the filing showing that Apple sells this data directly.

  I agree that there seems to be no direct proof in the filing that Apple sells the data directly. Maybe the headlines are sensational.

  However, claiming this is mostly about 3rd-party apps access to music library is also disingenuous. That's part of the lawsuit, but there's clearly something else going on. From the complaint (page 15, paragraph 46):

  During the time period relevant to this action, Apple has monetized this data in at least two primary ways: (1) by selling, renting, transmitting and/or otherwise disclosing lists comprised of its customers’ Personal Listening Information and other highly-personalized demographic information to various third parties; and (2) transmitting and disclosing its customers’ full iTunes libraries, comprised of such detailed Personal Listening Information as the specific titles of the songs and albums that its customers have purchased, to various iOS mobile application developers, who in turn have further disclosed this detailed Personal Listening Information to data brokers, data miners, mobile application developers, marketers, and other third parties.

  Part 2 of this complaint is what you're talking about. Part 1 is about other disclosures. The complaint goes on (page 16):

  A. Apple Sells Mailing Lists Comprised of its Customers’ Personal Listening Information to Anyone Willing to Pay

  47. First, Apple discloses its customers’ Personal Listening Information, identifying the names and addresses of its customers and the particular genres of music they have purchased from its iTunes Store,to data aggregators, data miners, data brokers,data appenders,and other third parties,who then supplement that information with additional sensitive personal information about each of Apple customers, including their age, gender, purchasing habits, education, household income, and (when applicable) the number, age, and gender of the subscriber’s children.

  They claim this is corroborated by lists of such information offered for sale by direct marketers. Now, I'll admit there are other ways such data can be gathered (by trackers in browsers, etc.), but it's interesting that such lists apparently are correlated with iTunes users and purchasers (including names, addresses, etc.). If such personal information is being shared with random app developers, that's a serious problem at Apple, regardless of whether they are marketing lists themselves. And while I don't think there's enough evidence to show Apple is selling lists given in the complaint, it's clearly something that deserves investigation. (Not to mention there are serious allegations that Apple is selling this info in the complaint -- is this merely legal bluster? I don't think that would earn favor from a judge if it's completely meritless. My guess is that they might have dug up someone or some info from a direct marketing company that can implicate Apple. Could it be baseless? Maybe. But where's the personal info coming from?)

  All big companies do this crap. However this information is leaking out of Apple and iTunes, it's a problem.

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• Re:Read the lawsuit (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday May 31 2019, @01:16AM

  by EvilSS (1456) on Friday May 31 2019, @01:16AM (#849556)

  However, claiming this is mostly about 3rd-party apps access to music library is also disingenuous. That's part of the lawsuit, but there's clearly something else going on. From the complaint (page 15, paragraph 46):

  I disagree with you here. All of that information could be coming from 3rd party apps. There is not real details on what "Personal Listening Information and other highly-personalized demographic information" actually is. Specifically they make the claim that

  (1) by selling, renting, transmitting and/or otherwise disclosing lists comprised of its customers’ Personal Listening Information and other highly-personalized demographic information to various third parties;

  but never provide anything backing that up except that data brokers are selling data from Apple users. In the same paragraph they state

  (2) transmitting and disclosing its customers’ full iTunes libraries, comprised of such detailed Personal Listening Information as the specific titles of the songs and albums that its customers have purchased, to various iOS mobile application developers, who in turn have further disclosed this detailed Personal Listening Information to data brokers, data miners, mobile application developers, marketers, and other third parties.

  Worded to make it sound like Apple is selling devs that data, when in reality the truth of the claim is that Apple allows developers access to the user's music library through APIs.
  
  Back to the first claim, the go on to state that

  These factual allegations are corroborated by publicly-available evidence. For instance, as shown in the screenshot below, the Personal Listening Information of 18,188,721 “iTunes and Pandora Music Purchasers,” residing across the United States (including in Michigan and Rhode Island), is offered for sale on the website of Carney Direct Marketing (“CDM”)–one of many traffickers of this type of Personal Listening Information–at a base price of “$80/M [per thousand records]” (8 cents each)...

  and they go on to show several other data brokers offerings, but they never show any information about the source of that data, or even hint that they have any proof beyond that to state that Apple is the one selling it. They devote only 4 paragraphs to that claim. They then spend basically the rest of their time talking about 3rd party app access to the music library (13 paragraphs) and the evils of gifting music.
  
  As for personal information, they cover that too

  Developers are also able to access identifying information associated with particular users, including via music user “tokens,” which are capable of association with uniquely identifying information pertaining to individual users (including, for example, by the numerous application developers who store the names and addresses of their users collected during enrollment or otherwise).

  I'm not saying Apple is totally in the right here. They need to crack down on this type of behavior by developers, including probably adding more explicit permissions to require users to authorize application to access media libraries. But I really doubt Apple is selling this data directly. It's too much downside for very little upside. If it comes out they are, then their reputation for not doing exactly that is going to be ruined. As for the money, well, as the lawsuit says:

  More than a decade later, Commissioner Swindle’s comments ring truer than ever, as consumer data feeds an information marketplace that supports a $26 billion dollar per year online advertising industry in the United States.

  To put that into perspective, Apple earns over twice in a quarter what the entire US online advertising industry generates in a year. The money Apple could get for their user data would be about equivalent to their Windex budget for that new headquarters of theirs.

  Parent