Subpoena Served To Pandora About The Privacy of Its iPhone and Android Apps

Earlier this month, Pandora Media reported it its S-1 Filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:

"... in late 2010 and early 2011, we were named as a defendant in several class action lawsuits alleging, among other things, violations of computer fraud, computer trespass and privacy laws. In addition, in early 2011, we were served with a subpoena to produce documents in connection with a federal grand jury, which we believe was convened to investigate the information sharing processes of certain popular applications that run on the Apple and Android mobile platforms. While we were informed that we are not a specific target of the investigation, and we believe that similar subpoenas were issued on an industry-wide basis to the publishers of numerous other smartphone applications, we will likely incur legal costs related to compliance with the subpoena..."

Pandora.com is a very popular music and free Internet radio website. There are Pandora apps (e.g., applications) for several smart phones: Android phones, Blackberry phones and the Apple iPhone. Pandora has partnerships with the manufacturers of over 200 consumer electronics devices, including Alpine, Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung and Sony.

The Register reported:

"The probe, according to an unnamed person familiar with the matter, is examining whether app makers provided adequate legal notice before tracking information such as the user's geographic whereabouts and the unique identifier of their phone.

From Ars Technica:

"Pandora's Android app transmits a plethora of personal information to third parties after all, at least according to an analysis done by security firm Veracode... and found that data about the user's birth date, gender, Android ID, and GPS information were all being sent to various advertising companies... Pandora's [Android] app seems to be integrated with five separate ad libraries: AdMarvel, AdMob, comScore (SecureStudies), Google.Ads, and Medialets.

This is a most interesting topic to monitor.