I opened Spotify this morning and I was greeted with an updated Terms of Service document, I don’t have time to go through the whole document this time but I was interested to see if they had made any modifications to their document when you connect your Facebook account and it seems like they are still the same so I would like to share with you some highlights of the document:
2.1 Registration data
If you connect to the Service using your Facebook credentials, you authorise us to collect your authentication information, such as your username, encrypted access credentials, and other information that may be available on or through your Facebook account, including your name, profile picture, country, hometown, e-mail address, date of birth, gender, friends’ names and profile pictures and networks. We may store this information so that it can be used for the purposes explained in Section 3 and may verify your credentials with Facebook.
Let’s scroll down to Section 3
3. How we use the information we collect
We may use the information we collect, including your personal information, to: (i) provide, personalise, and improve your experience with the Service and products and services made available through the Service, for example by providing customised or localised content and advertising; (ii) ensure technical functioning of the Service and products and services made available through the Service, develop new products and services, and analyse your use of the Service, including your interaction with applications, advertising, products and services that are made available, linked to or offered in the Service; (iii) communicate with you for Service-related purposes, including promotional e-mails or messages; (iv) enable and promote the Service, including features and content of the Service and products and services made available through the Service, such as sharing, user interactions, notifications and suggestions, and integration with third party services; (v) enforce this Privacy Policy, the Terms and Conditions of Use, and the Mobile Terms, including to protect the rights, property or safety of Spotify, users or any other person and the copyright-protected content of the Service; and (vi) as otherwise stated in this Privacy Policy.
4.2 Sharing with Facebook and other services
If you connect to Spotify using Facebook or otherwise connect your Spotify account to an Other Integrated Service, the default setting is generally that Spotify automatically shares your activity and activity-related stories with that service, including the music you listen to. You understand that such information may be attributed to your account on Facebook or the Other Integrated Service and may be published on such service. See section 5 below to learn how you can disable sharing of information on Facebook and Other Integrated Services.
Spotify also enables you to share a particular item of content, on an individual basis, to third party services or other Spotify users by using the share functionality in the Service. Please note that sharing of such content on a third party service may be posted as activity on the Service, regardless of your account settings. To share an individual item of content to a third party service, you’ll be prompted to enter your access credentials for that third party service. Spotify may store your username and an access token or similar credentials obtained from the third party service, so that you are able to share particular items of content, on that third party service, on an individual basis, without entering your access credentials again.
You understand and agree that Facebook’s or other third parties’ use of information they collect from you is governed by their privacy policies, and Spotify’s use of such information is governed by this Privacy Policy.
Using applications such as Spotify is fun, specially if you use their free service and you don’t mind the commercials but as any other business Spotify must find ways to create revenue and personal information is valuable that is why it is important to understand what happens with specific applications in the event that you connect them with your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).