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Spotify has always had a bent toward social sharing and keeping music activity public. Now, a new website<\/a> called Panama Playlists has exposed the service\u2019s privacy gaps by revealing Spotify playback activity, playlists, and more for various celebrities\u2014including tech leaders, politicians, and more.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do you know what your Spotify privacy settings are? That\u2019s the question being prompted by a new website<\/a>.<\/p>\n As highlighted by The Verge<\/a>, Panama Playlists includes a variety of Spotify data from users like:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quote from the site\u2019s anonymous creator:<\/p>\n I found the real Spotify accounts of celebrities, politicians, and journalists. Many use their real names. With a little sleuthing, I could say with near-certainty: yep, this is them.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been scraping their accounts since summer 2024. Playlists, live listening feed, everything. I know what songs they played, when, and how many times.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t technically a data leak, since presumably all of the information was accessed publicly. Ultimately though, it seems that the information is accurate.<\/p>\n The Verge\u2019s piece mentions how several of the people they reached out to seemed surprised by their own lackluster Spotify privacy settings. Elizabeth Lopatto explains at The Verge<\/a>:<\/p>\n This website is possible because Spotify\u2019s design assumes everyone wants to share everything with the entire world and makes it difficult for users to protect their privacy. It defaults to making all playlists and profiles public. To change that, users need to go to the \u201cPrivacy and social\u201d menu and toggle the \u201cPublic playlists\u201d setting to private. However, that won\u2019t retroactively make playlists private; instead, you\u2019ll have to do all that by hand on each individual playlist.<\/p>\n So if you\u2019re a Spotify user, it\u2019s probably a good day to check those privacy settings to ensure they\u2019re what you thought. <\/p>\n Or there\u2019s always Apple Music<\/a>, which\u2014in my estimation at least\u2014is significantly more strict about the privacy of your listening data.<\/p>\n Does \u2018Panama Playlists\u2019 give you any hesitation about using Spotify? Let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.<\/a><\/p>\nPanama Playlists exposes Spotify\u2019s privacy shortcomings<\/h2>\n
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