Rejecting Sonos' private data slurp basically bricks bloke's boombox In August, when wireless speaker maker Sonos decided to update its privacy policy to allow it to gather more data on its customers from their devices, it characterized the consequences of refusing to accept the change as being left out of future feature upgrades. Sonos' policy change, outlined by chief legal officer Craig …
GDPR isn't in force yet. You're right though, they are asking for trouble as they can't even identify who accepts the privacy terms so any and all PII collected will be illegally obtained. The Sonos seems to collect a lot too.
Seems like good sport to get a 4 year old to accept and upgrade then sue the pants off them for listening to your house and uploading recordings. Wouldn't even have to ask the child, they'd be led to accept terms just by trying to listen to a song in the new app which won't play until the upgrade happens.
Exactly, Kevin.
We had a similar case, an underage child had taken out a subscription by listening to free material (a typical scam in the late 2000s, you offer something, E.g. a tune, for free and with blue text on a blue background you say that by clicking on the download button you are agreeing to a 50€ a month subscription) and a lawyer sent a letter asking for payment. A return letter from our lawyer, pointing out that a 12 year old cannot enter into such a contract, ended the matter.
E.g. a tune, for free and with blue text on a blue background you say that by clicking on the download button you are agreeing to a 50€ a month subscription) and a lawyer sent a letter asking for payment. A return letter from our lawyer, pointing out that a 12 year old cannot enter into such a contract, ended the matter.
Had a friend who was duped into signing up for something that I charitably described as a scam where the cancellation process involved sending a fax. She had signed up for a sample of a product with the terms and conditions written in the smallest font size/closest colour to the background they could get away with. Despite only thinking she was paying a small amount for shipping of the trial she'd signed up to £50 a month in product (teeth whitening kit) that she didn't want. When I found out we called the number listed on the website only to be told that the first months product was already waiting to be shipped and the trial started when you signed up not when you got the product. Yes we could cancel but only in writing and they didn't take email, we could fax or write to them. I told her to just cancel the card she'd used telling the card company that she thought someone else might have the details.
She initially said she wouldn't bother and I said I wasn't going to let her go home unless she did it. I said if you don't they can legally take money from you card each month. She then cancelled it because "it seems like you might know what you're talking about". Next day she called me and said she'd worked it out last night in bed that it was £600 a year they could nick from her. She only lost £50 but it was a good lesson in reading the small print. When the sample and first months product arrived apparently they were so tiny it wasn't worth bothering with.
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There are two issues at play...
1) SONOS clearly wants to remain relevant and compete with Amazon, therefore they are attempting to morph their speakers in to a new product that you already have in your home.
2) Metadata capture is a way to further gain value from you. Your data has value and they can then use it to help identify information that they can sell/rent to advertising agencies.
3) A future product... adding adverts to the streams... ;-) (Think about that one for a second....)
But all of this comes at a risk.
If they don't provide security and protect the information that they capture... they will be sued in to oblivion. .
We can look at half a dozen major financial companies that have taken multi-billion dollar hits over data breaches and the impact to their bottom line.
As many have already put out there... there are other solutions like blue tooth speakers, or I'd prefer actual wires. My old Adcom had A/B unfortunately after 20 year... it died and it was cheaper to replace it with an A/V receiver which had the same thing, which again died and replaced it with a new A/V receiver which I keep in my office with a nice pair of wired bookshelf speakers. ( Vienna Acoustics that I picked up on sale at a steep discount because the stereo store was closing and they were floor models. )
So I'll pass on Sonos and wait for the lawsuit that is definitely coming to a courtroom near you. ;-)
Issues have been raised with Sonos in years past that guests on your network can force updates that create incompatibilities with other users and firmware. There is no admin role that gates local updates.
Sonos software will also pester you with update reminders when you're trying to use your device until you finally give in.
Except when the software refuses to work without the update, yet the update won't install on your device (such as a dedicated iPod for controlling your Sonos for example) because they now require a level of IOS that your device can no longer be upgraded to.
It's a speaker app, not Doom 4 ffs.
...reaffirms my belief that picking a simple Bluetooth speaker with half decent sound quality was probably the right decision in the long run. Yes it may be limited in functionality compared to the Sonos - but it's a damn sight cheaper and will continue to function quite happily for many years - at least until the Bluetooth specs deviate wildly at some future date.
Yup, harmon/kardon 730 Twin Powered speaker A/B push button, as does my AV receiver from around 2002 and probably practically any other decent receiver from who knows how far back. Bang & Olufsen were really big in their adverts from eighties or so in promoting this. I remember they had an advert with a Beolab speaker shown mounted over the doorway to a kitchen so that you could listen to the Beovision in living room, over in the kitchen. Which, I thought was the coolest party trick ever, and then I found out how much B&O systems cost! :)
Not necessarily. My Yamaha network stereo amp has their Musicast system that works seamlessly and perfectly all over my house with music synchronised to all end speakers, or I can route or stream different music and/or sources to different rooms using the app.
With the amp and 3 endpoints it still cost 1/2 the price of the equivalent Sonos, with much more flexibility and functionality.
The big advantage with Sonos is the multiroom synchronised sound.
I've done that in a couple of ways..
1) The volume control. Till the neighbours complained anyway.
2) A cheap FM transmitter, with stereos in other rooms being tuned in.
No need for a company to be able to slurp my private date etc for that. For that matter, no need to spend more than a tenner...
@tin 2
Doubt it.
The App was discontinued by its original authors when they sold it. The new authors never successfully brought the "New Super Revised Improved Version" to market.
The installed version (on my and the other's devices) was installed from an APK and the permissions were subsequently stripped.
To use your words from another post in this thread ...
Also means that nobody thought to put in a billion lines of every-movement code by then so we're good :)
Is sufficiently Sonos-like (has synchronisation, does Spotify, Internet radio, local music collection). The server software (runs on various NAS, Pi & alikes etc) is still mainatined. The player devices need to be sourced on eBay though (Squuezebox Radio, Boom, Player) or 'handbuilt' form Pi/alikes + DAC + speakers.
I wish someone would take on development again of (Logitech) Squeezecenter and SqueezeBox, it worked brilliantly.
I still don't understand why Logitech killed it off, something I suspect they are going to regret as the IoT market explodes and they're left behind.
I also took the Slimdevices / Squeezebox route a long time ago with many hundreds of CDs stored in FLAC (and Apple Lossless for those stupid devices) on a couple of servers at home (Heavily upgraded MediaSmart and a QNAP TS-453A). I was very sad that they discontinued them. I still have a pre-logitech Slim Devices Squeezebox, One of the LCD touch screen ones and two Booms. The biggest issue with them is frankly something unforgivable that has happened with many other things including £300 Philips shavers - the rubberised finish on the remotes and Booms has de-vulvanised making them sticky and prone to collecting dust. They must have selected cheap / untested rubbers which breaks down over a relatively short life. The hardware should be fine for many years to come. I also understand that some have had problems with the Boom speakers with separating cones - again a clear manufacturing fault. As a result the Booms have now been locked away and replaced with the HEOS7s. Unacceptable really.
I have since upgraded my Denon (largely to support 4K and DV) to a 4400 which has HEOS support. That works well and I've added to HEOS7s to other rooms. I can either control everything from the Amp or each speaker from the HEOS App. The kids connect over BT, and I use WiFi / ethernet to stream the same FLAC files to the speaker. Works great and has no privacy issues I've seen so far. The audio is at the high end of what Sonos deliver - some would say better.
Google "piCorePlayer" and you'll find an excellent project that emulates a Squeezebox player. Audio out on the HDMI port stuck straight into the AV amp, and even shows what's being played on the telly. Admittedly the low accuracy clock on the Pi sometimes drifts when synced up to several players, but for just a £30 outlay I can put up with that.
I still run SqueezeCenter on a MediaSmart with a backup on a new QNAP VM in case the former fails to support my two Squeezebox Booms, one Touch and one original Squeezebox. They run beautifully with Flak lossless and provide good TuneIn integration.
I do have to be honest though, they sometimes drop off the network for no good reason and the UI is less than perfect. My wife now has an Echo Dot connected to her Kitchen Boom with Line In always enabled so she can more reliably listen to Radio 4 Extra.
Paul
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Yeah I have a bluetooth speaker and a Hifi adapter that allows me to use a something as basic as feature phone to play music. Yes it's somewhat limited in terms of features but it works.
Friends have a load of these to do multiroom. They've got a bigger house than me whereas in mine the bluetooth signal reaches the entire house it doesn't in theirs.
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" "new", "shiny", and "connected" isn't always the best. "
It may not be the best in terms of the interests of the people paying for and using it.
But without these Interweb of Tat and related shiny products and secret services, what would Tomorrow's World (or modern equivalent) be writing/vlogging/etc about? What would the marketing communications people, the product+service evangelists, and so on, do all day to earn a crust?
Good luck with your unconnected light bulb.
Unconnected to data? That's standard. No internet of things at home for me, thanks.
Unconnected to the mains? That's a torch.
Personally, at the end of the day when I get home I don't want a bunch of bleeding edge equipment that I have to spend the evening debugging. I just want nice reliable equipment that >WORKS<.
If that means some of it (especially speakers) is ten years older than me, then so be it.
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