Ever since the
Sony rootkit debacle we know that music played on a connected computer is not safe from data mining. According to
Marc at Since1968, the latest incarnation of iTunes sends information to Apple whenever you double-click on a song. Apparently Apple uses this information to find albums and tracks for sale by the artist whose song was presently playing.
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.
And as a user at Boing Boing stated:
I just ran a packet trace of the new iTunes - it only connects to Apple if the Mini Store is open. For regular MP3s, it'll run a full text search to find related articles, for purchased music, it searches by the original product ID. Sample query string is: /WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/ministoreMatch?an=Daft% 20Punk&gn=Electronic&kind=song&pn=Discovery
The problem: Apple collects your data without your knowledge or consent. And who knows, perhaps the next iTunes will only support RIAA-approved MP3s.
[via
Boing Boing]