Lawsuit alleges Bose's headphone app exfiltrates your listening habits to creepy data-miners

Cory Doctorow 3:26 pm Wed Apr 19, 2017

Bose's $350 wireless headphones need an app to "get the most" out of them, and this app monitors everything you listen to — the names of the podcasts, the music, videos, etc — and sends them to Bose without your permission, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Chicago by Kyle Zak.

But the Illinois resident said he was surprised to learn that Bose sent "all available media information" from his smartphone to third parties such as Segment.io, whose website promises to collect customer data and "send it anywhere."

Audio choices offer "an incredible amount of insight" into customers' personalities, behavior, politics and religious views, citing as an example that a person who listens to Muslim prayers might "very likely" be a Muslim, the complaint said.

"Defendants' conduct demonstrates a wholesale disregard for consumer privacy rights," the complaint said.

Bose headphones spy on listeners: lawsuit [Jonathan Stempel/Reuters]

(Images: Bose; Didia, CC-BY-SA)

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