Bose headphones have been spying on customers, lawsuit claims
By
Hayley Tsukayama April 19 at 5:24 PM
A pair of QuietComfort 35 headphones, from Bose — one of several products listed in a lawsuit alleging the company spied on users through their headphones. (Courtesy of Bose)
Bose knows what you're listening to.
At least that's the claim of a proposed class-action lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Illinois that accuses the high-end audio equipment maker of spying on its users and selling information about their listening habits without permission.
The main plaintiff in the case is Kyle Zak, who bought a $350 pair of wireless Bose headphones last month. He registered the headphones, giving the company his name and email address, as well as the headphone serial number. And he download the Bose Connect app, which the company said would make the headphones more useful by adding functions such as the ability to customize the level of noise cancellation in the headphones.
But it turns out the app was also telling Bose a lot more about Zak than he bargained for.
According to the complaint, Bose collected information that was not covered by its privacy policy. This included the names of the audio files its customers were listening to:
Defendant programmed its Bose Connect app to continuously record the contents of the electronic communications that users send to their Bose Wireless Products from their smartphones, including the names of the music and audio tracks they select to play along with the corresponding artist and album information, together with the Bose Wireless Product’s serial numbers (collectively, “Media Information”).
Combined with the registration information, that gave Bose access to personally identifiable information that Zak and other never agreed to share, the complaint says. Listening data can be very personal, particularly if users are listening to podcasts or other audio files that could shade in information about their political preferences, health conditions or other interests, the complaint argues.
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