Muse Group, the new owners of Audacity, received a tremendous amount of negative reactions from users after it updated the app’s privacy policy during the weekend. The change stated that it will start to collect user information via the app, which could potentially be shared with third parties such as advisors, potential buyers, and law enforcement. This resulted in user outrage, with some even accusing the once offline-only audio editing software of becoming “spyware”.
Following this, Muse Group has recently announced that it will be revising the policy change to clear up any misunderstanding regarding its new data collection implementation. The group claims that it was “unclear” in phrasing the new change, and assured that Audacity will only collect “very limited data” from users. These include operating system version, processor type, opt-in error reports, and IP addresses – where the latter are stored in a readable format for 24 hours before becoming “pseudonymised and irretrievable.”
In regards to data sharing to authorities, Muse Group said it will only do so if required by a court in a jurisdiction in which it operates. It clarified that it won’t simply hand over user information following a law enforcement request, nor would it sell or share it with them.
Company head of strategy Daniel Ray explained via GitHub that data collection is necessary because of two new features that will be introduced in the upcoming 3.03 update for Audacity. The first of which is a way to automatically check for updates, and the second is the optional error reporting. He also noted that Muse Group is currently working with its legal team on the privacy policy revision, which is slated to be published soon.
Privacy concerns have been a highlighted topic as of late, with Facebook-owned private messaging service WhatsApp’s policy change causing quite a stir among its users. While some of these implementations are often clarified by developers to be limited in terms of collection and even sharing, the mere mention of “data collection” is enough to cause controversy, especially by the privacy conscious users of today.
(Source: Audacity [GitHub])
