Audacity is again criticized for data collection after adjusting its privacy policy

Audio editing software Audacity has been heavily criticized by users over a new privacy policy. It recently included a passage through which Audacity collects certain user data. The program has previously come under fire for privacy concerns.

The audio app has changed its privacy policy since last week. It contains a new sentence about which data can be collected. This concerns ‘data necessary for investigation, prosecution and possible requests from authorities’. Audacity doesn’t explain what that means in practice. It is therefore not clear what types of data are collected and when.

Users are not happy about that. There are several threads on Reddit, among others, in which they express their displeasure. Some users say they are looking for alternative audio editing programs, but forks of the open source software are already available.

The anger is partly due to recent changes to the software. In May of this year, Audacity was acquired by the founders of Ultimate Guitar. Shortly afterwards, Audacity announced plans to add telemetry, although that would be via opt-in. After much criticism, Audacity decided to stop those plans, but many users feel that the new privacy policy offers possibilities to collect data from the app again.