A complaint filed last week by Kyle Zak in federal court in Chicago suggests that Bose Corporation spies on its wireless headphone customers through its free Bose Connect app downloaded from Apple Inc or Google Play. The app allegedly tracks music, podcasts, and other audio that consumers listen to and then violates their privacy rights by selling the information without permission.
Zak purchased the QuietComfort 35 headphones for $350, downloaded the app, and provided his name, email address, and headphone serial number. After doing so, he learned that Bose sent “all available media information” from his smartphone to third parties like Segment.io, a website that collects customer data to “send it anywhere.”
The complaint stated that audio choices offer insight into a customer’s personality, behavior, political views, and religious preferences, citing that someone who listens to Muslim prayers is “highly likely” to be Muslim.
“Defendants’ conduct demonstrates a wholesale disregard for consumer privacy rights,” the complaint said.
Zak is suing for millions of dollars in damages for buyers of headphones and speakers, including QuietComfort 35, QuietControl 30, SoundLink Around-Ear Wireless Headphones II, SoundLink Color II, SoundSport Wireless, and SoundSport Pulse Wireless. He’s also seeking to stop the data collection, which he said violates the federal Wiretap Act and Illinois laws against consumer fraud and eavesdropping.
The lawsuit reads:
“To collect customers’ media information, defendant designed and programmed Bose Connect to continuously and contemporaneously intercept the content of electronic communications that customers send to their Bose wireless products from their smartphones, such as operational instructions regarding the skipping and rewinding of audio tracks and their corresponding titles. In other words, when a user interacted with Bose Connect to change their audio track, defendant intercepted the content of those electronic communications.”
The Bose Connect app lets users skip songs or pause in the middle of a track, which means that every time a user does so, it counts as a communication.
When signing up, customers do not see the Bose app’s user service and privacy agreements, and there is nothing mentioned about data collection.
Bose Global Public Relations Manager, Joanne Berthiaume, stated that the company plans to “fight the inflammatory, misleading allegations.”
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