Your Bose headphones may be spying on you, believe it or not.
At least that’s what a class-action lawsuit filed late on Tuesday in Illinois claims. It says that the audio equipment maker has been compiling and selling the listening habits of its users without permission.
Kyle Zak is the main plaintiff in the case, who bought a $350 pair of wireless Bose headphones last month. Once he registered the listening device and giving the company his name, email address and headphone serial number, the company appears to have compiled information on him.
He also added the Bose Connect app to improve the functionalities that the headphones can offer him. The suit further claims that Bose compiled information on Zak that was not covered by the privacy policy.
This data includes the audio files and video files that he listened to, including artists and albums information, as well as what podcasts he might be listening to.
The information was later sold to a data mining company called Segment.io, based on research conducted by Edelson, the Chicago-based law firm representing Zak. It is unclear how this information was acquired by the law firm.
Bose has not responded to these claims, but the allegations are worrisome considering we live in a digital environment where our privacy never seems to be truly private.
