Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by microtonal 2239 days ago
Spotify made their choice to use the SDK for whatever gains they get out of it, and as a customer you can choose to not use their service or app if you disagree with that.

Wrong. At least for EU citizens.

If Spotify are collecting data in this way (and not only using the SDK for Facebook Login), they are in violation of the GDPR. There must be clear unambiguous consent to collect the data in the form of an affirmative action of the user and it must be possible to use the app without giving consent, because the Facebook data collection is not essential for the app to operate.

If they do share data with Facebook, Spotify should be scared, since they are definitely large enough to be on the radar of the EU or national bodies.

Moreover, outside the EU it would be dumb for Spotify to say "just don't install the app if you don't agree". The 10 Euro per month that premium users pay is worth more than some Facebook tracking.

(IANAL)

1 comments

> If Spotify are collecting data in this way (and not only using the SDK for Facebook Login), they are in violation of the GDPR.

It's kinda worse. They "only" open the gate wide and any of your data they can see is there for Facebook to take. It can feast on any data it can grab with the same permissions the main app has. Like a fucking virus from MS-DOS times infecting binaries, but this time developers are doing it quite voluntarily.