Users of the audio editor Audacity noticed the publication of a privacy notice that regulates issues related to sending telemetry and processing the accumulated information about users. There are two points of concern:
- In the list of data that can be obtained during the collection of telemetry, in addition to parameters such as the hash of the IP address, operating system version and CPU model, there is a mention of information necessary for law enforcement, legal proceedings and requests from authorities. The problem is that the wording is too general and the nature of the specified data is not detailed, i.e. formally, the developers reserve the right to transfer any data from the user's system in the event of a request. With regard to the processing of telemetry data for their own purposes, it is stated that the data will be stored on the territory of the European Union, but transferred for processing to offices located in Russia and the United States.
- The rules state that the application is not intended for persons under the age of 13. This paragraph may be interpreted as age discrimination, violating the terms of the GPLv2 license under which the Audacity code is provided.
Recall that in May, the Audacity audio editor was sold to the Muse Group, which expressed its readiness to provide resources to modernize the interface and implement a non-destructive editing mode, while keeping the product in the form of a free project. Initially, Audacity was designed to work only on the local system, without accessing external services over the network, but the plans of the Muse Group include the inclusion in Audacity of tools for integrating with cloud services, checking for updates, sending telemetry and reporting information about crashes and errors. . The Muse Group company also tried to add code to record information about the launch of the application through Google and Yandex services (the user was presented with a dialog prompting them to enable sending telemetry), but after a wave of discontent, this change was canceled.
Source: opennet.ru