"Bose headphones spy on listeners says lawsuit"

You caught me, I never turn my phone off. I'm not sure I would know how to.

 

The maker of the We-Vibe smart sex toy (a sex toy that requires a phone app) just paid out $3.75m in a class action settlement last month due to collecting too much personally identifiable information. Wait till the business travelers discover that Bose has been tracking their adult video viewing while on business trips (motel rooms get lonely). Combined with also being able to track what podcasts, audiobooks, movies, youtube videos, and adult videos are played over the headphones while using the Connect app. There's a datamining gold mine there, especially if you can cross-reference those personally identifiable people in other databases.

Bose should not have been collecting info about what audio/video is being played. That info was not necessary for the functionality of the app. If the app does need some of that info, for example to display cover art or other metadata about what is being played, then they need to make it clear that the data is anonymous and not logged. Otherwise you get news storied like this and bad PR like this.

 

Don't forget your survival kit...

 

April 20th, 2017

A message to our Bose Connect App customers.

We understand the nature of Class Action lawsuits. And we’ll fight the inflammatory, misleading allegations made against us through the legal system.

For now, we want to talk directly to you.

Nothing is more important to us than your trust. We work tirelessly to earn and keep it, and have for over 50 years. That’s never changed, and never will. In the Bose Connect App, we don’t wiretap your communications, we don’t sell your information, and we don’t use anything we collect to identify you – or anyone else – by name.

If there’s anything else we think you should know, you’ll hear it straight from us.

Thank you.


Update
April 22, 2017

We told you you’d hear things straight from us. We’ve answered your questions when they’ve come in, but when news stories repeat misleading information from a class action lawsuit, we have to repeat our response to clarify. So we’re going to share with everyone what we’ve shared with those of you who’ve contacted us directly, and what we’ve shared more broadly to correct the record.

First, our privacy policy can be found on the Connect App. You’ll find that the Connect App collects standard things to make your experience, and our products, better -- like device information, app performance, and app and product usage. That includes information about songs playing on the device, volume played, and other usage data.

But you have to be using the Connect App with your Bose product for that to happen. You can use every Bose Bluetooth product without the Connect App.

For as long as we’re hearing from you, you’ll keep hearing from us. And we’ll keep posting additional information that you haven’t asked us about, too.

 

Who wants to hear from them???

 

I have a pair of these. The app sucks anyways. Nobody forced me to download it either. Delete...moving on.

 

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like the first statement basically implies that nothing is being collected and then they out with what's being collected in the second statement.

Now, in fairness, they haven't admitted to selling information, but they're definitely collecting it - which seems to be at the root of the lawsuit. So where does "misleading" enter into this?