Music streaming service Spotify has updated its privacy policy yesterday in an attempt to quell concern about the company’s efforts to collect and share data about its users.
In its new blog post outlining the policy, the company again admits that the previous version of the privacy policy led to some “understandable confusion”, before launching into plain English remodeling of the document. With a new policy that is now more intelligible, the company will no doubt be hoping to claw back those users who were driven away.
Spotify goes on to explain that in addition to the updated privacy policy, it has also added an introduction that sets out the basic principles it incorporates. It goes on to explain that if you have already accepted the privacy policy from a couple of weeks ago, “you will be automatically covered by this update, including the clearer language, additional privacy commitments and the new Introduction and its principles”. This is something of a strange move as it will almost certainly lead to users poring over the new documents looking for any changes that may have been snuck in via the back door — something that could have easily been avoided.
“When our new Privacy Policy started rolling out two weeks ago, it created some understandable confusion. In a follow-up post, we did our best to explain the intent behind the changes in the Policy and our commitment to our users’ privacy. We also said that we would work to update the Privacy Policy to reflect what we promised in that post. As we worked to do that, we took note of many people’s comments that they appreciated the clear commitments in the blog post that were easier to understand than some of the details in the Policy itself.”
The full privacy policy is still filled with legal terms and jargon so there is no change there, but those who accepted the new policy already will be covered by this update when it’s rolled out.
