We still haven't heard much more about that Federal Grand Jury investigation into Pandora and other mobile apps over privacy concerns, but an independent security firm has now gone ahead and taken matters into its own hands. According to an analysis done by the folks at Veracode, Pandora does indeed seem to be sharing more information about you then it lets on.
More specifically, they found that the Android app (they haven't yet gotten around to the iOS version) "appears" to be sending information about users' birth date, gender, Android ID and
GPS location to various advertising companies -- bits of information that the firm notes could be combined to determine who someone is, what they do for a living, and even who they associate with. For its part, Pandora is simply declining to to comment at the moment, and we're guessing that's unlikely to change anytime soon given the aforementioned investigation.
While Pandora does request some personal information to customize music streams for users, Veracode said the music service was also sending data, possibly without even knowing it, to advertisers.
"The application developers may not even be aware of the privacy violations they are introducing by using third-party advertising libraries," he said. "They may merely think they are getting [the agreed amount] per ad impression, not that the ad library is leaking significant information about the user."
Not good Pandora...not good.
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