In that case it’s probably best for you to return your Sonos speakers. 

The location determines two things, your local radio stations and your eligibility for services according to geo-location.  One is for convenience, the other is mandatory.  Also, whether you like it or not, your WiFi broadcasts your location to anyone who wishes to see it.  Sonos at least asks for permission to use it, a great many apps do not.

Bottom line is, if you do not wish to broadcast your location, stay off any network, anywhere, ever.

Honestly, if you have a mobile phone, you should return that as well, your location is constantly being triangulated by cell phone towers in order to provide you service.  

To take it further, the revenue folks, post office, voter rolls, and motor vehicle departments all know where you live, and some of them know where you work. Bizarre, perhaps, but it’s the price we pay as a society. 

Resistance is futile. 

Sonos could offer a set of options, provide your location and get access to all the services or don’t provide it and only get access to things that are location independent.

Somehow I don’t see that second option as being much of a Sonos selling point and it would be a lot of work for no profit.

Thanks for the responses!

Thank you jgatie and Stanley_4 for directly answering the query seriously and making good points.

Thanks Rob_95 for the funniest and probably truest answer.

Yes I do realise that we live in surveillance capitalism society but it doesn’t mean I have to like it or accept it and I do what I can to avoid the worst of it.

But whereas there is a built in inevitability about location tracking for services like mobile phones and wi-fi, what is that for a set of speakers? What legitimate reason do Sonos have for needing to know your location?

Default local radio stations is a lame reason (it’s the worldwide web) and should never be mandatory.

So we’re left with geo-location eligibility for services - as jgatiie points out. But what ‘services’?

The only ‘service’ I want from speakers is to play the content fed to them. The services that provide that content are not Sonos. They are separate companies with whom I have separate contracts. So what Sonos services are we talking about here and why would anything Sonos does be geo-location dependent?

I have a Naim hi fi system with lovely Sonus Faber speakers.. That system plays content I feed to it in various ways. Vinyl, CD, I can even stream to it from any of my devices. Does that system want or need my location? Of course not.

Naim make high quality hi fi and Sonus Faber make high quality speakers. That’s it. What are Sonos doing exactly?

What is the problem exactly? I just disabled Location from the Sonos app on my iPhone and it still works great.

Obviously during setup it is needed, but that’s because Apple require it in order to enable Bluetooth and Wifi discovery. Once the app is set up there is zero need for it, so just disable it.

Thanks controlav I didn’t know you could disable  it after setup - thanks.

But what does “Apple require it in order to enable Bluetooth and Wifi discovery” actually mean? How does that work?  And why is Sonos asking for it not my iPhone?

Apple require location permission before enabling Bluetooth and Wifi scanning because both actions can reveal your location. Its been a while since I read the docs and wrote any code that cared.

@dabo
I share your preference to avoid sharing my details with everyone. Some of the sharing is an attempt to provide an “easy” user interface. For example, there is little point forcing you to navigate through music services that are blocked in your country. And, there may be some convenience if preferences can be shared between phone/pad/computer. I keep my browsers and email client on short chains. There are lots of demands that I accept browser tracking cookies, else the site will not allow further views. In almost all cases I’m only curious and will simply leave — I don’t need their cookies or data.

On my iPad there is a popup option where I can “share once” while I’m setting up new Apps.

@controlav 

So turning on location at setup is simply a mechanism to give permission (rather than eg a tickbox saying ‘I accept that the Sonos app will scan for Bluetooth and wi-fi and that those operations will enable my location to be discovered)? 

So of course turning off location after setup doesn’t prevent scanning, meaning, again, location is not actually needed for the service to work.

But did they do it that way because it’s easier than a tickbox or another reason - like they want to see and use your location anyway?
And presumably a Google or Microsoft install would require the same.

So Apple, Google, Microsoft or Sonos don’t actually need to know your location - it’s only there if they happen to want to look for it.

But do they? They should guarantee not to.

@buzz 

Yes I operate in a similar way.

The conveniences you mention could be achieved by allowing you to simply select your location from a list.
Again, tracking your actual location isn’t necessary for that.

At this point our data is simply a resource that can be sold or rented. Everyone attempts to collect as much as possible. Search engines share lots of data. Amazon collects and shares lots of data. If you search for a product, then email a link to a friend, Amazon tags that link with your search. If your friend shares the link, the chain continues. I notice that Office emails that include links, have long chains of referrals attached to those links. Browsers and email clients tend to hide these chains.

In their Privacy Statement, Sonos says:

How We May Share Personal Information

Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers.
 

There are of course some caveats, but the “need” to obtain some location data is explained in that Statement. 

You misunderstand: the permission is given only for as long as the option is enabled, so once you have set it up, flip the switch and the permission is gone: the app cannot use then use Bluetooth or wifi scan. (And by wifi scan I mean search for other wifi networks - obviously the app wont work without access to the network the phone is connected to).

(This is true for iOS, no clue about Android: Google obviously have a vested interest in gathering as much data as they can about you).

@controlav 

But will it still be able to connect to your speaker using the network it already knows about?

Mine doesn’t do Bluetooth but same for Bluetooth?

Yes, regular network is covered by the “Local Network” privilege which is essential for Sonos. There is also a special “network broadcast” privilege that apps like Sonos and mine require, which requires special permission from Apple. The user does not see this one, but it is necessary to find local devices on the network.

If Bluetooth is disabled then the app cannot make any Bluetooth calls. Sonos use this during setup for newer devices, and for the portable speakers for playback of course.

Worth noting that in addition to location being necessary for determining what music service are available in your location, it’s also need for voice services.  Sonos is not licensed for all three voice assistants they offer in every location in the world.  That license could be the agreements with Amazon or Google or with the local government.

@melvimbe

How does that work?

eg I use Alexa - but I don’t tell it to play on Sonos I tell it to play from Spotify - or maybe it knows now and I don’t have to actually say that and it plays from Spotify automatically via wifi. The point is I understand that Spotify has to work with Alexa and also with Sonos. My understanding is that in that chain Sonos has the contract and technical connection with Sonos not Amazon and Alexa. Spotify also has the contract and technical connection with Alexa. So a contract between Amazon and Sonos is not necessary because Sonos deals with the music services not the voice assistant services.

My soundbar (which I bought primarily for my TV display which has no speakers) doesn’t have Bluetooth (I was told by Sonos that they would ‘never’ add bluetooth because of the sound quality compared to wi fi) but I understand that with Bluetooth the connection is different.
I can’t pay just any old content from my Macbook laptop via wifi through my Sonos soundbar - it has to be from a music service Sonos recognises or from my iTunes music library (so at least I can play music I have created that way).
Now if I had bluetooth I guess I could tell Siri to play a track from my music library - but again why would Sonos need a contract with Apple re Siri?

Bluetooth works as a completely agnostic connection unlike the wifi connection. Meaning it will simply relay anything the computer is playing - no contracts required.

I always wished my soundbar did have Bluetooth then I could play laptop audio - especially You Tube, wirelessly. I can’t do that right now. Instead I connect to my hi-fi system for that.

@nik9669a 

You mean this? 
“We may also share limited location information (i.e. an IP address and anonymised ID) with some of our third-party radio content partners who may run ads on their stations.”

I don’t want advertisers to get my IP address thanks.
And they can link that to an identity in other ways.

But the key point is I do not trust any of these companies with my personal information - and for good reason.
Tech companies have time and time again shown a complete disregard for fundamental privacy rights no matter their stated policies or the content of their PR on the subject.
The laws are there but are not strong enough and those that are there are not enforced rigorously enough nor carry a severe enough penalty to actually deter.

This is a fundamental question of freedom and control. Of personal sovereignty. Any concession to surveillance capitalism by any of us should be on a strictly necessary basis only.



 

So why buy a connected device? 

If you use an Alexa voice command to stream Spotify on a Sonos device, then Spotify has to have some sort of agreement with Amazon, Amazon has to have an agreement with Sonos, and Sonos has to have an agreement with Spotify. When playing this method, Amazon is just passing the command to play music on to Sonos, it’s not actually involved in the playback.  This is unlike using airplay or bluetooth, where your phone is doing the playback and passing the audio on to a separate speaker.

Also, as I said before, the local government will also have licenses and regulations that need to be met.  In the US, for example, wifi devices and microphones have to met FCC requirements. In some places, this may be an easy task, but Sonos would still have to do the work to be in compliance.  

This is not true.  You can play music files from a shared drive on a computer or NAS.  Certain file types would not be supported of course.  Alternatively, you could use airplay to send audio from your mackbook to your Sonos.  Sonos speakers can also play music services directly.  The Sonos app is just a controller.

But your Sonos product isn’t bluetooth so it’s not relevant.  As well, as was stated earlier, Sonos is asking for your location so that it can help setup any service that it can in your location.  It’s not a matter of you picking a service you want, say you only want to use airplay, then asking your location to see if you can legally use airplay at your location. 

Then why didn’t you just get a ‘dumb’ bluetooth speaker?

Your macbook has airplay, so you could use that.  But again, if you wanted a speaker with bluetooth, why did you buy a speaker that doesn’t have bluetooth?  This is like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn’t have a trunk.

Connected to what?

I bought a good quality speaker for my TV connected by optical input and capable of being a node on my local network across which I can stream music it to from compatible music services and/or networks to drives.

@dabo I’m with you up until this point

It’s not a question of freedom or control, it’s just about choice. You don’t have to use Sonos.

Just as an FYI, you didn’t use to have to provide your location when setting up a speaker, Sonos allowed you to skip this and still set it up. This was about 4 years ago. You could set your country and postal code (ie not precise location) in your user profile and music services would be available through that, you didn’t have to give precise location in the app.  But at around the same time they launched Sonos Radio and started selling user data to third parties. Moving forward I think it’s safe to assume that they will increase efforts to monetize users, through selling additional data or software subscriptions etc. If this bothers you now, likely will get worse for you. You can block a lot (most? all?) of the Sonos telemetry by blocking certain urls and domains, so you don’t have to willing give up all your data. But if this type of thing bothers you, make the choice to return it.

So where did you find Sonos sells personal data?