Audio brand Sonos is once again throwing its user base into disarray after it was discovered that the company had made a major update to its private policy. As noted by YouTuber and repair technician Louis Rossmanthe change will affect the ‘How we may share personal information’ section.
The old policy had a line that read: “Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers.” The remainder of the section then discussed how certain data practices could be considered a “sale of data” in certain US states.
Now if you go to the June 2024 update, the rule that Sonos doesn’t sell personal data is gone. However, the rest of the data practices section is exactly the same.
It may be a small change, but it was enough to start a wildfire among the userbase. People are not happy at all. Rossman’s video was posted on the website Sonos subredditand the comments section is a non-stop barrage of people criticizing the brand.
Privacy concerns
Users in the post seem to believe that the policy change means Sonos will start selling customer data to third parties. One person claims the brand is alienating its loyal customer base and wants to rebuild its business “with consumers who simply don’t care about privacy.” These sentiments are echoed by others, and as you can see the general attitude is very cynical.
Interestingly, this limit only seems to have disappeared in US policy. We checked the Canadian, Spanish, BritishAnd Australian privacy pages and that line about Sonos not selling customer information is still there and in bold.
It is unknown why only US policy was changed. One comment we saw online argues that this could be because consumer protection laws in other countries may be stricter than those in the US.
Analysis: benefit of the doubt
You can’t really blame these consumers for such a negative response. Internet privacy and data collection have been hot topics for years as people worry about big tech companies spying on them. It’s a major concern that has proven legitimate over time. Additionally, Sonos users aren’t too happy with the brand after being burned by a recent app update that removed basic features.
However, it’s possible that people are just blowing things out of proportion. Removing the first line doesn’t necessarily mean Sonos is selling customer data to make a quick buck. In fact, this whole situation reminds us a lot of what happened with Adobe.
If you’re not aware, Adobe also changed its terms of use policy not too long ago. The policy included language that led users to believe that the company would use the content they created to train their AI. Adobe has since clarified the wording in the update and assured their customers that nothing is actually being looked at or taken. It was all one big misunderstanding.
We’ll give Sonos the benefit of the doubt here and assume that this is just a misunderstanding and that the policy change was a legal matter they had to do in the US. For more information, we reached out to Sonos and asked if the company could clarify what the change means for its users. We will update this story if we hear back.
Until then, check out Ny Breaking’s list of the best Bluetooth speakers for 2024.