Apple Sold Personal iTunes Listening Data of Millions of iPhone Users, Alleges Complaint
Apple sold the personal iTunes music listening information of millions of iPhone users to app developers, data aggregators, list brokers and other third parties in violation of various privacy laws, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. The disclosures were done “for further exploitation and monetization – all without providing prior notice to or obtaining the requisite consent from anyone,” said the complaint, which seeks class-action status.
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The 51-page complaint opens unconventionally with a photo of a “massive billboard” Apple took out in Las Vegas this year to capitalize on the privacy misfortunes of Facebook and Google. “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone,” said the billboard. “The statement on the billboard is plainly untrue,” because “none of the information pertaining to the music you purchase on your iPhone stays on your iPhone,” said the complaint.
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,” said the complaint. Apple “profits handsomely from its unauthorized sale” of customers’ personal listening information, it said. It also “does so at the expense of its customers’ privacy and statutory rights because Apple does not notify let alone obtain the requisite written consent from its customers” beforehand, it said.
Apple’s disclosures “were not only unlawful, they were also dangerous,” because they enable the “targeting of particularly vulnerable members of society,” said the complaint. Any entity “could rent a list with the names and addresses of all unmarried, college-educated women over the age of 70 with a household income of over $80,000 who purchased country music” through the iTunes mobile app, it said. “Such a list is available for sale for approximately $136 per thousand customers listed.”
As consumer data “has become an ever-more valuable commodity, the data mining industry has experienced rapid and massive growth,” said the complaint. “Unfortunately for consumers, this growth has come at the expense of their most basic privacy rights.” Apple didn’t comment Tuesday.