Monday, November 1, 1999

RealJukebox is Watching! -- 12:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The New York Times has posted this article (you need to register to read it, but registration is free) which alleges that RealNetwork's RealJukebox gathers information on the users listening habits and reports them to RealNetworks. Here's a taste:

The information that RealNetworks gathers is extensive. According to Richard M. Smith, an independent Internet security consultant from Brookline, Mass., who discovered RealJukebox's monitoring functions, each time the program is started on a computer connected to the Internet, it sends in the following information to the company: the number of songs stored on the user's hard drive; the kind of file formats -- RealAudio or MP3 -- the songs are stored in; the quality level of the recordings; the user's preferred music genre, and the type of portable music player, if any, that the user has connected to the computer.

This is more than a little bit disturbing. Even if this information is just being gathered to "customize services for individual users," it is still done without the user's knowledge or consent. It makes me glad that I use WinAmp as my computer audio player. Thanks Slashdot for the information.

News for 11/01/1999

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