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Audacity Accused of Collecting User Data to Make “Spyware”


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My father always says that nobody gives hard four pesetas. Applied to our times and in the computing environment, we could say that we should not trust the free software. Somewhere is the catch. And if it is not in advertising, it is because said software collects user data that is then sold to third parties. For example, Avast antivirus in its free version.

And it seems that the well-known free audio editor Audacity It is also doing its thing by collecting data from its users. So more and more we have to watch what we install on our Macs. Especially the free software.

The popular audio editing software Audacity, is having many accusations on social media of doing «spyware»For two months, collecting information from its users and sharing it with third companies, including some« state controllers ».

The new owner of Audacity wants to do business

The topic has come up because a couple of months ago, Audacity was acquired by Muse Group, owner of other audio-related projects, including the Ultimate Guitar website and the MuseScore app. According to Fosspost, changes to the privacy policy section on the Audacity website indicate that the new owner has since added various mechanisms for collecting personal data to the audio editor. Ugly, very ugly.

The type of data that now collects Audacity of its users, includes the processor, operating system and version of the computer, the user’s IP address and any reports of crash, fatal error codes and messages generated by the machine. Perhaps more concerning is the inclusion of a “tag” listing the data to be collected “for legal application, litigation and requests from authorities (if any).”

The storage of such data is located on servers in the United States, Russia and Europe. For example, IP addresses are stored in a identifiable for a day and then stored on different servers for a year, leaving users identifiable through government data requests.

So it is not surprising that many users of said audio editor are upset with the new Mouse Group guidelines wanting to collect a series of data that is totally unnecessary for the execution of a simple audio editor. You can see such complaints on Reddit and GitHub.

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