Audacity has long been described as a go-to for DIY audio creators. It’s user-friendly, it’s free, and it has some great features. The platform boasts 100 million downloads. But now critics are talking about the …uh, audacity of its data collections.
Since being taken over by the Muse Group in April, Audacity has come out with new guidance on how it uses user information.
Moving forward, Audacity has said it will capture “data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any)” and share personal data with “any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary,” according to reporting by Mat Smith at Engadget.
This abstract language, and the potential for spying, raises concerns among privacy advocates – sure, you can just not create songs about crimes you plan to do or have done in the past, but there are other gray areas and issues that might come into play here. For example, will Audacity insiders monitor the audio of users to look for content creators under 13, which is technically a violation of policy?
Smith reports that many users expected this type of data collection to be opt-in.
To be clear, some data is routinely collected, including the operating system and country of a user. But the concerns widely shared on tech media today govern whether Audacity employees or contractors can monitor the actual microphone audio that users are putting into the system.
“We believe concerns are due largely to unclear phrasing in the Privacy Policy, which we are now in the process of rectifying,” said Muse Group head of strategy Daniel Ray on GitHub, as reported by Mashable.
Clear as mud!
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