Sonos forces post-purchase privacy policy change

Background

Sonos, Inc. specializes in the manufacture of audio devices many of which are connected to the internet and provide "smart" features. Using those features inevitably provides Sonos with data on the users of their products.

Changes to the privacy statement

On March 2023 Sonos' privacy statement stated, on page 12 of 35 under the "How We May Share Personal Information" section: "We do not and will not sell your personal data to third parties" . That privacy policy was updated on June 2024 and said sentence was removed from the section as well as from Privacy Statement as a whole. It is worth noting the that the "Why?" section on the reason's Sonos collects user data has substantially changed between revisions and, in the 2024 version, includes a balancing test ^[What?] and allowing Sonos to "... enable you to select the right music service options based on your geographic location.". This new wording also does not explicitly prevent Sonos from sharing/selling user data to third parties.

Consumers were then forced to agree to the new terms of service if they wanted to be able to continue using the Sonos product that they had already bought and paid for. There was no option to "disagree" or "opt out" of the agreement and continue using the product as usual after the terms of the privacy statement were changed.^{[citation needed - Second souce of this behaviour]}

Terms of use agreement prompt after change.

See Also

• Post-purchase EULA modification