Eriq Gardner reports:
Pandora, the web service that allows users to customize radio stations based on listening preferences, is facing a class action lawsuit in Michigan.
Peter Deacon, a Michigan resident, is leading the lawsuit with claims that Pandora is breaching customer privacy by making users’ profile pages, including favorite songs and listener history, publicly available and searchable online. Additionally, the class action asserts that Pandora is violating privacy by integrating users’ listening records with their Facebook accounts.
The openness is claimed to be a violation of Michigan’s Video Rental Privacy Act and Consumer Protection Act. The plaintiffs are demanding statutory damages of $5,000 per person.
Read more on Hollywood Reporter.
When are businesses going to learn that some users really really really don’t like you taking their data and posting it to Facebook without their explicit consent? And that changing your privacy policy may be legal but it’s not smart if you apply it to existing accounts without actually contacting users or customers to alert them and give them a chance to opt out or delete their accounts?