Audacity clarification of privacy policy & apology

iGuRu.gr > Audacity clarification of privacy policy & apology

MuseGroup, the owner of the open source audio editing program Audacity, today published an updated privacy policy and an apology. The company acquired the Audacity repository in May 2021 , and the problems have been ongoing since then.

It started with adding telemetry to the open source application. Audacity is a program that runs offline on various platforms and the Muse Group suggested that telemetry would help focus growth.

See more articles from iGuRu.gr when you search for news on Google.

iGuRu.gr preferred source

Plans to add telemetry were rejected following criticism from Muse Group of its design. Audacity still contained an option to provide bug reports. But this time users could choose.

The next controversy began with a new privacy policy announcement published in early July . The new policy provided more information about the data the company collects.

The Muse Group tried to clarify its recent privacy policy and admitted that some phrases were unclear.

Today, Muse Group published a privacy policy update and an apology on the official Audacity repository on GitHub. The updated Audacity privacy policy is available on the official website.

The briefing examines the main points of criticism made against the previous version of the privacy policy.

Specifically, the following points are amended:

The device that discourages users under the age of 13 from using the Audacity application has been removed.
Explains the purpose of reporting errors and reporting updates.
The full IP address will never be saved (truncated or hashed).
The paragraph "collection of personal data for law enforcement" makes it clear that no additional data is collected.

For those interested the following table has been published on the Audacity website:

Network feature	Data collected	Purpose
Check for updates	• User-Agent string (Audacity version, OS name and version) • Country from IP address	Audacity will periodically check to see if a new version of the application is available. This feature is on by default. We provide clear links to disable it when the app is first opened.
Error reports	• Basic technical data (CPU info, Audacity version, OS name and version) • Error codes • Stack trace	If a serious error occurs in Audacity, you are shown the relevant information and given the option to send it or not send it to us as a report. We use this information to help us detect serious issues and fix them quickly.

Network feature

Data collected

Purpose

Check for updates

• User-Agent string (Audacity version, OS name and version)
• Country from IP address

Audacity will periodically check to see if a new version of the application is available.

This feature is on by default. We provide clear links to disable it when the app is first opened.

Error reports

• Basic technical data (CPU info, Audacity version, OS name and version)
• Error codes
• Stack trace

If a serious error occurs in Audacity, you are shown the relevant information and given the option to send it or not send it to us as a report.

We use this information to help us detect serious issues and fix them quickly.