Tried the GDPR data export from Spotify. By default, you get like 6 JSON files with almost nothing. After many emails and complaining and a month of waiting, I got a 250MB archive with basically EVERY INTERACTION I ever did with any Spotify client, all my searches. Everything. pic.twitter.com/ALVw6Auief
— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) August 2, 2018
EU’s law on user data and privacy – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – has given users the right to request all their data that’s collected by a service or a company.
Recently, a Spotify user – Peter Steinberger – exercised this right of theirs, and then took to Twitter to share what all the data the music streaming service has been collecting.
Yeah, everything, including IP addresses, window sizes, connection timeouts, and what song user stops and when.
Any interaction I ever did, including window sizes, connection timeouts, what song I stopped when. Nothing particular interesting, just every-freaking-thing.
— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) August 2, 2018
Not only this, Steinberger found even the brand of their headphones in the data revealed by Spotify.
They even store the brand of headphone I use. How do you even get that data, digging deep in CoreBluetooth? pic.twitter.com/LnuDKxtW6v
— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) August 2, 2018
It’s not clear if the company officially offers a break up of what it does with all this data.
Of course, some of the data is used for offering customized experience to users. However, several users are of the opinion the company just collects everything it can, with no specific plan on how to use all the extra stuff.
Pretty sure it’s some “let’s collect all and aee what we can use” paradigm.
— Peter Steinberger (@steipete) August 2, 2018
To conclude, this is just one user sharing their data. More details could emerge if other Spotify users demand this info from the company and share that publicly.
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