Apple iTunes Is Adware?
You may have read earlier this week, on any number of sites, that Apple's iTunes jukebox suddenly has become adware. A new component was added which transmits information about the songs to which the user is listening. As a result of this transmission, the program begins to show ads for similar music.

The new component, called the iTunes MiniStore, displays advertisements for songs near the bottom of the iTunes program. People quickly became suspicious of the fact that the songs being advertised were related closely to the music being played by iTunes.

One person decided to look at the data packets leaving his computer. He discovered that every time he selected a song in iTunes, it transmitted the name of the artist over the internet. Shortly thereafter, advertisements for other songs performed by that same artist would appear in the MiniStore.

This behavior seems to be limited to the Macintosh version of iTunes. People testing the Windows version do not see this behavior.

It is important to note that this transmission occurs for any song selected in the iTunes playlist, not just the songs purchased from the iTunes Store. If you have MP3 or OGG music files, obtained from any source, the artist's name is transmitted, if the file is tagged properly.

Many of the people who commented on the various blogs discussing this issue wonder why anyone would complain about this, since Apple already knows which songs you have purchased from them. They are overlooking the fact that not every song a person listens to has been purchased from iTunes.

After exhaustively poring over license agreements and privacy statements, no one seems to be able to find any mention of this activity. If there is a disclosure somewhere, it is well hidden.

Apple has made a statement about this. They acknowledge that iTunes transmits the name of the artist, in order to display relevant ads in the MiniStore. Apple states that the collected information is discarded immediately and is used only to decide which advertisements to display. If you turn off the MiniStore, no information is transmitted and you can listen to your music in peace.

This does not seem to present much of a privacy problem. Assuming that Apple is being truthful, the information that is transmitted is discarded as soon as their servers decide which advertisement to display. Calling this spyware probably is inappropriate, as the information is not recorded anywhere (according to Apple anyway).

However, iTunes can be considered to be adware now. In fact, don't be surprised if the seedier adware makers begin comparing their products with iTunes in the near future.

People who purchase music from the iTunes Store on a regular basis probably will find this feature to be useful. This isn't all that bad a feature, really. It just has a creepy feel to it. The real problem is that Apple included it without telling anyone and turned it on by default.

You would think that in this day and age, a company such as Apple would know better. Adware, spyware and all such related software are a sore subject for internet users today. Without notice, a routine software update transformed one of Apple's most popular products into adware. Could Apple really have been so naive as to think people wouldn't spot this and cry foul?

On a related note, it seems that a large percentage of people with iTunes on their computer do not want it. The reason for this is that Apple has bundled it with QuickTime. Numerous web sites embed movies or trailers on their pages in QuickTime format. If you want to watch them, you must have a media player that can handle QuickTime movies.

Apple's QuickTime download page features an enormous download button, which links to the QuickTime/iTunes bundle. On the other side of the page, a much smaller, plain-text link will take you to another page, where you can download QuickTime without iTunes. You also can skip QuickTime altogether, if you like. A program called QuickTime Alternative can play all QuickTime files, without QuickTime itself being installed.