Privacy statement concern

I haven't heard anything from Sonos.
Well, now you have: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/254561-sonos-accept-new-privacy-policy-well-brick-device

Well, now you have: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/254561-sonos-accept-new-privacy-policy-well-brick-device

[i] “f a customer chooses not to acknowledge the privacy statement, the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease,” a company spokesperson told ZDNet. “The customer can choose to acknowledge the policy, or can accept that over time their product may cease to function.”

Resistance is futile.:8

Resistance is futile.:8
Have you or beynym read the ACTUAL statement yet? Not the device will "brick" in the case, the RESPECTIVE SERVICE will instead:

Direct Control or Voice Control Functionality

Sonos will share a subset of this data with partners that you have specifically authorized to receive such data in order to ensure that the voice or direct control functionality is working properly. If you wish for us to stop collection of this information or sharing it with the parties you have authorized, simply disable the feature (for example disable voice control) or unlink the feature (for example unlink your home automation remote) from your Sonos Products. Conversely, voice control functionality will not work unless you authorize us to collect and process the data as outlined in this section.

That borg reference wasn't meant to be taken too seriously.
I shall add irony tags for the humourly impaired in future posts. 😉

I haven't heard anything from Sonos.
Well, now you have: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/254561-sonos-accept-new-privacy-policy-well-brick-deviceThe ExtremeTech article is the single worst bit of clickbait on this change that I've seen. It provides almost no actual information, but it does manage to work some outright lies in.

Any truth in the bold portion gleaned from another site? The other information is fine, but is identifying information being brought to mother ship?

That "functional data" includes email addresses, IP addresses, and account login information -- as well as device data, information about Wi-Fi antennas and other hardware information, room names, and error data.

That "functional data" includes email addresses, IP addresses, and account login information -- as well as device data, information about Wi-Fi antennas and other hardware information, room names, and error data.
First, everyone can read the Privacy Policy for themselves. You don't need it to be parsed for you because it's actually quite straightforward language. Here's the link to the US page:
http://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/privacy

Now let's get into the question and potentially the misunderstanding being driven by these articles. Sonos is going to collect all of this information:

We collect:
Registration data. This data includes your email address, location, language preference, Product serial number, IP address, and Sonos account login information (as described above).
System data. This data includes things like Product type, controller device type, operating system of controller, software version information, content source (audio line in), signal input (for example, whether your TV outputs a specific audio signal such as Dolby to your Sonos system), information about wifi antennas, audio settings (such as equalization or stereo pair), Product orientation, room names you have assigned to your Sonos Product, whether your product has been tuned using Sonos Trueplay technology, and error information.

Now, I'm betting that most of you aren't alarmed by that list, but let's briefly touch on the things you might have questioned.

Email address is part and parcel of the rest of your registration. The location and IP address allow Sonos to ensure compliance with regional authorities, and to make sure you're who you say you are.

The rest of it isn't actually in any way identifying.

So, I'll ask the same question I've brought up in the other thread. What exactly in this language is concerning? I've not come across anything I thought was disconcerting, nor have I found anything to be ambiguous or unusual.

I'm not concerned, so I can't answer Skelton's question.

However, I do thinks it's worth mentioning that it makes sense to me that device data and such is necessary information to gather in order for voice activation to work. Alexa cannot tell your speaker to do something if it doesn't know it's there and what it's called. I am sure Amazon and other's have similar policies. Amazon may not need to know wifi related data, but it also isn't concerned with synchronization and such.

I think it's also rather disingenuous for these articles to stop at saying you cannot opt out of the policy. That is true, but doesn't give the accurate picture. The policy INCLUDES the ability to opt out of data collection. So yes, you have to accept the policy to use the latest version of the product, but you do not have to send Sonos all your data.

To be fair, I'm confused about what data is required and what's optional. That's not Sonos fault, there's a lot of misinformation going around. I would try and clear it up, but I'm just not concerned.

However, I do thinks it's worth mentioning that it makes sense to me that device data and such is necessary information to gather in order for voice activation to work. Alexa cannot tell your speaker to do something if it doesn't know it's there and what it's called.
Helpful point. There's nothing being collected that strikes me as outside the reasonable details necessary to make Sonos (and potential voice activation) function. I'm open to someone showing me what I've missed though.

I think it's also rather disingenuous for these articles to stop at saying you cannot opt out of the policy. That is true, but doesn't give the accurate picture.

Disingenuous is the most generous way to put it. Some of the stories are peddling outright falsehoods while others seem to omit much relevant detail.

Take ZDNet for example. Their parent company, CBS Interactive, collects far more personal information than Sonos, but that didn't work its way into their clickbait article. Sure, you have the option to opt out of some, but it's an extensive monitoring program. For what it's worth, their "policy change notification" is identical.

I'm curious about only the "Product Orientation" aspect of all that. Everything else makes perfect sense to me, especially as the collection of that data allows their support groups to help people here on these boards and elsewhere. Is the Product Orientation just a bit about how the Playbar is situated? It's the only device I can think of that would have something like that available. I'm pretty sure there's no way for Sonos to know that my Play:1s in my kitchen are mounted upside down....oops, I just told them. Dammit! 🙂