If you own a Sonos device, you"d better accept the terms of the company"s new privacy policy, or you may soon find that the hardware you purchased no longer works as expected.
Last week, Sonos began emailing its customers to inform them of changes to its privacy policy, as it begins harvesting a range of data from them in preparation for the upcoming launch of new smart speaker integration. But the company is not allowing existing users to opt out of the new privacy policy, and it"s made it clear that unless they accept it, their devices may lose some of their functionality.
In a statement to ZDNet, a Sonos spokesperson said that "if a customer chooses not to acknowledge the privacy statement, the customer will not be able to update the software on their Sonos system, and over time the functionality of the product will decrease."
The spokesperson added: "The customer can choose to acknowledge the policy, or can accept that over time their product may cease to function."
Sonos did say that users are able to "opt out of submitting certain types of personal information to the company; for instance, additional usage data such as performance and activity information". However, they won"t be allowed to opt out of allowing the company to collect what it refers to as "functional data", which includes IP and email addresses, account login credentials, device data, Wi-Fi network information, and various other data related to hardware and error reporting.
Source: ZDNet