I need a way to use Sonos without giving location.
My local network is my local network and location is irrelevant so I don’t want this intrusion in to my business. I don’t want to have to report my whereabouts to the manufacturer of a piece of hardware I buy. The concept is frankly bizarre.
+12
So where did you find Sonos sells personal data?
It’s in the privacy policy. Advertisers on Sonos Radio. They will sell your location as well as identifying information.
But at around the same time they launched Sonos Radio and started selling user data to third parties.
Can you provide some evidence for this claim?
https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/privacy#legal-2023-privacy-share-info-container
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.
Yes, Sonos radio is a subscription service, except where it’s ad based. Every streaming service is subscription or ad based, except in the rare case where they are supported by user donations. I don’t see why this is controversial. Will Sonos offer other subscription model sources of income? Quite possibly. I can’t imagine Sonos would ever charge a fee for a feature or service they currently provide without an additional charge.
+12
It isn’t controversial.
It isn’t nefarious stuff, the policy is easy to understand. Sonos aren’t trying to hide anything.
So where did you find Sonos sells personal data?
It’s in the privacy policy. Advertisers on Sonos Radio. They will sell your location as well as identifying information.
Advertising Partners
If you decide to use Sonos Radio, we will share a subset of your information with third party advertising companies to present, via Sonos Products, interest-based ads for features, products, and services that might be of interest to you. Specifically, we share the following information with our advertising partners: location, language, and genre of the station you are currently listening to (which is not based on your overall listening history). We will share information with advertisers, which describes the overall listening audience in general. We may also share limited location information and identifiers (i.e. an IP address) with some of our third party radio content partners who may run ads on their stations.
That’s not exactly selling your user data, since they aren’t directly selling it, but I can see where some would not want that. Not a big issue though as you can avoid that just by not using Sonos radio.
+12
So where did you find Sonos sells personal data?
It’s in the privacy policy. Advertisers on Sonos Radio. They will sell your location as well as identifying information.
Advertising Partners
If you decide to use Sonos Radio, we will share a subset of your information with third party advertising companies to present, via Sonos Products, interest-based ads for features, products, and services that might be of interest to you. Specifically, we share the following information with our advertising partners: location, language, and genre of the station you are currently listening to (which is not based on your overall listening history). We will share information with advertisers, which describes the overall listening audience in general. We may also share limited location information and identifiers (i.e. an IP address) with some of our third party radio content partners who may run ads on their stations.
That’s not exactly selling your user data, since they aren’t directly selling it, but I can see where some would not want that. Not a big issue though as you can avoid that just by not using Sonos radio.
Share is being used here as a synonym for sell. Depending on where you live, sonos’s use of share would meet the legal definition of sell. Share sounds better right? This is in the privacy policy.
Edited to add: I can’t link to an example directly but here’s a screen capture where they say they are selling the data.
Share is being used here as a synonym for sell. Depending on where you live, sonos’s use of share would meet the legal definition of sell. This is in the privacy policy.
I get that the legal definitions can vary, but I think most normal people see a big difference between selling and sharing. As well, there is a difference between specific user identified data, annoymous data, and data that’s been summarized into a statistic. For example, I don’t personally see much issue with letting an advertiser know that that particular Sonos radio station averages 1000 users a day for 1 hour in the general NYC area. I would have a problem if Sonos were to sell (for cash) my name, address, and purchase history to a 3rd party marketing company.
This is one of those topics where communication is pretty poor and people really have no idea what specifically you’re talking about when someone says Company X is selling your data. The language is vague, perhaps purposely, and people are forced to make blind assumptions rather than actually know what’s going on.
+12
Share is being used here as a synonym for sell. Depending on where you live, sonos’s use of share would meet the legal definition of sell. This is in the privacy policy.
I get that the legal definitions can vary, but I think most normal people see a big difference between selling and sharing. As well, there is a difference between specific user identified data, annoymous data, and data that’s been summarized into a statistic. For example, I don’t personally see much issue with letting an advertiser know that that particular Sonos radio station averages 1000 users a day for 1 hour in the general NYC area. I would have a problem if Sonos were to sell (for cash) my name, address, and purchase history to a 3rd party marketing company.
This is one of those topics where communication is pretty poor and people really have no idea what specifically you’re talking about when someone says Company X is selling your data. The language is vague, perhaps purposely, and people are forced to make blind assumptions rather than actually know what’s going on.
I linked a picture above where it makes it clearer what Sonos is selling and sharing. Some of this information wouldn’t be limited to Sonos Radio users.
I would have a problem if Sonos were to sell (for cash) my name, address, and purchase history to a 3rd party marketing company.
I don’t think they sell your purchase history, that’s not in the privacy policy. But they do sell a number of other identifiable information, like maybe not your address, but perhaps your precise location :) Kind of like what OP is concerned about :)))
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 sub of the day ukseparate 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?
Sonos, like many tech companies, likely collects location data for various reasons, including marketing, product improvement, and potentially even regulatory compliance. While it may not seem immediately necessary for a speaker system, companies often gather data to tailor experiences or ensure they're meeting regional legal requirements. However, transparency and user control over such data collection practices are essential for maintaining trust and ensuring users feel comfortable with their devices.
In contrast, Naim's focus may be primarily on delivering exceptional audio quality and user experience without the need for extensive data collection. Each company operates with its own approach and priorities, and while Sonos may emphasize services or features that benefit from location data, Naim's focus appears to be on delivering premium audio experiences without relying on such information.
So where did you find Sonos sells personal data?
Where did you find me saying that they did?
Read again. That isn’t the issue.
+17
@bumper mentions selling in his post directly above mine.
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