How Does Spotify Check Family Address for Premium for Family

Spotify will be requesting location data for Premium Family unit subscribers.

Angela Lang/CNET

Spotify knows a lot about its users -- their musical tastes, their most listened-to artists and their summer anthems. Spotify will also want to know where y'all live or to obtain your location data. Information technology's part of an attempt to notice fraud and abuse of its Premium Family program.

Premium Family is a $15-a-month plan for up to half-dozen people. The only condition is that they all live at the same address. But the streaming music giant is concerned most people abusing that plan to pay every bit fiddling every bit $ii.50 for its services. So in August, the company updated its terms and conditions for Premium Family subscribers, requiring that they provide location data "from fourth dimension to fourth dimension" to ensure that customers are actually all in the same family.

You accept 30 days to cancel after the new terms went into event, which depends on where you are. The family plan terms rolled out kickoff on Aug. 19 in Republic of ireland and on Sept. 5 in the US.

The company tested this last twelvemonth and asked for exact GPS coordinates but concluded the pilot program later customers aghast, 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 too much when it comes to your personal information.

"The changes to the policy allow Spotify to arbitrarily utilise the location of an individual to ascertain if they continue to reside at the same accost when using a family business relationship, and it's unclear how often Spotify volition query users' devices for this data," said Christopher Weatherhead, technology lead for Britain watchdog group Privacy International, calculation that there are "worrying privacy implications."

Location data is particularly sensitive, as it hands out information on where you've been, giving companies and advertisers details about your personal life. Fifty-fifty when the data is anonymized, location data is often so specific that it only takes a few steps to figure out who the coordinates are linked to. In New York, lawmakers are considering a bill banning apps from sharing people's location information within the metropolis.

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

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

"This data is encrypted and tin be edited past the plan owner as needed," the company said in a statement. "The location data that is collected during Premium Family unit account creation is just used by Spotify for that purpose."

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In one case you sign upwards for the family unit plan, Spotify will ask those on the plan to provide the company a home address using Google Maps. Every person added to the plan will have to exercise the same, or enable location services for Spotify on their devices, the company said. Spotify said information technology doesn't utilize that home location data for advertizement and that it doesn't store the data for internal use.

"One time verification of a family member's home address is completed, nosotros practice not shop their location data or rails their location at whatever time," a Spotify spokesperson said.

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

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

While Google has its own privacy concerns, privacy experts suggest that information technology'due south better to apply the Google Maps option rather than turning on your real-time location data 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 exercise at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr and the National Security Bureau's quondam associate general counsel for intelligence law. "Consequently, it's of import that Spotify has created a less intrusive option for users, with manual data entry to residence location rather than ongoing monitoring of the person'southward location."

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

The alter also brings up privacy concerns for children who are on their parents' family plans. You have to exist over 13 years one-time to use Spotify, but the location data requirements notwithstanding set off alarms for privacy experts.

"It seems excessive to permanently track 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 half dozen:55 a.one thousand. PT: Spotify has already begun its location data requests starting on Sept. 5 for customers in the Usa.

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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/#:~:text=Once%20you%20sign%20up%20for,their%20devices%2C%20the%20company%20said.

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