Tuesday, January 24, 2006

iTunes 6.0.2 - Spyware or not?

First I am reading the Wall Street Journal and find out MYSPACE is owned by the devious Rupert Murdoch, and now Apple is getting more into the fascist software game, what is a freeware aficianado to do?

From SPYBOT - SEARCH AND DESTROY


"We tested the Windows version inside out, and found a bunch of connections, but only to Apple itself and their mirrors at Akamai, which is legit. We then got the idea to test the Macintosh version, and indeed found connection to 2o7.net, which belongs to a company named Omniture. Omniture is a company for Web Analytics and Web site Statistics. On the one hand, this means that data may be transmitted to a third party even, which according to the license agreement should not happen, at least not without clearly expressed users' consent. On the other hand, why does Apple need an external company for analytics and statistics if they discard the information right after looking up related albums?"
"These doubts have caused us to give Apple a few calls, emails and faxes, expressing our concerns, asking for a statement and offering our help in getting an insight from an anti-spyware companies perspective. The only answer we received was a form letter making fun of the fact that we have no Macintosh version and giving us the clearly wrong standard answer that no personal data is submitted, and a link to their website showing how to disable it."
"Let's summarize it. Should you be paranoid? Unless you have a bunch of MP3s downloaded from file sharing networks maybe, in which case I guess you wouldn't want a company working close with music labels to know, you probably don't need to be. It's a violation of law, and it's a break-in into your privacy, but it's not yet such a big deal as the recent Sony story. But you should show Apple your dislike clearly before they take the next step on the intrusion ladder (by the way, did you know that Apple forces OS registration on you way harder than even Microsoft?)"

2 comments:

Pete said...

Crap, and I just LOADED i-Tunes.

Don J. said...

Great attitude Bob. I thought you were with us on the whole anti-faschist theme.