[IP] Itunes 6.02 = Spytunes?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Richard Forno <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 11, 2006 8:42:15 AM EST
To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Itunes 6.02 = Spytunes?
From the since1968 blog:
http://since1968.com/article/153/itunes-is-watching
As noted at TUAW, iTunes 6.0.2 contains a new feature: the
MiniStore. It’s
neat, at first. Sort of.
But not really.
Each time you play a different song, the MiniStore features
information about
the artist currently playing, as well as “Listeners Also Bought…”
Here’s a
full size capture of Apple marketing in action: as you can see, I’m
playing
Mary J. Blige covering U2’s “One”, and the MiniStore shows other
albums from
Mary J. Blige and U2.
This means, of course, that every single time I play a song the
information is
sent back to Apple. You can turn off the MiniStore at the click of
a button,
but it’s not clear whether turning off the MiniStore is the same as
turning
off the flow of data (one doubts it). And don’t bother looking for
a way to
turn this “feature” off in the Preference pane: it’s not there.
< snip >
However, users report that disabling the MiniStore option within the
iTunes
application, or blocking the app's network ports via LittleSnitch
will fix
this, but since I'm not running iTunes 6.X, I have not verified this
yet.
Reportedly, MiniStore ships enabled, meaning those who download and run
iTunes 6.02 would be at-risk to this monitoring.
-rf
infowarrior.org
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