Latest iTunes Raises Privacy Concerns

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Intel Macs = good. New iTunes = bad. Blogs and websites are filling with posts about a new feature in iTunes 6.0.2, just released, called the “Mini Store”. When playing a song, the Mini Store shows albums and tracks for sale by the current artist. The reason people are up-in-arms is because Apple hasn’t been forthcoming (yet) about exactly what data is being sent when the Mini Store is open.

Good news is that further investigation by monitoring traffic has shown that if the Mini Store is closed, nothing’s being transmitted. It’s also shown exactly where the data is going. Unfortunately, default behavior after installation is “Mini Store open”.

Merlin reports that iTunes appears to be phoning 2o7.net when the Ministore is loaded. That domain is registered to Omniture, Inc. of Orem, Utah. From Omniture’s site:

2o7.net is an Internet domain used by Omniture, Inc. on behalf of our customers to improve Web site design and to generally improve the user experience on the Web. This domain is used by Omniture’s data collection systems, and is the domain under which Omniture places cookies. These cookies are NOT spyware – they are simple text files that help Omniture customers measure usage of their Web sites and performance of their marketing campaigns.

Kirk adds, “after more analysis, this does not send info to Apple when you are playing music, but rather when you click on a song. If the song is in a playlist, the MiniStore display will not change when the next song begins.” Source: Boing Boing

We Say: Most likely, this is much ado about nothing (when it comes down to the actual data being sent). But … you would think that companies would learn from past mistakes (I’m not necessarily talking about mistakes by Apple, by the way). Give us information. I’m sure this was intentionally hidden, but they had to know that someone would figure it out, so just tell us details from the start. For example, there’s nothing about Omniture in the EULA, though there is about info about Gracenote (which is used for iTunes track info). If Apple had been open about this, there wouldn’t be a big flap about it.