Privacy Group Asks FTC to Investigate Jay-Z's Samsung App

With Jay-Z’s recent tactic of unveiling his Magna Carta…Holy Grail album, advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the Samsung app, which distributed the LP early to a million of its users. The app required users to grant Samsung access to storage, system tools, network communications, phone calls, and much more information in order to run the program, and EPIC now wants the situation investigated. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, a spokesman from EPIC shared the following statement:

Samsung failed to disclose material information about the privacy practices of the App, collected data unnecessary to the functioning of the Magna Carta App, deprived users of meaningful choice regarding the collection of their data, interfered with device functionality, and failed to implement reasonable data minimization procedures.

Samsung has responded to the group’s complaint saying that the FTC is unwarranted and that the Magna Carta app’s permissions are no different from any other apps on the market.

Any information obtained through the application download process was purely for customer verification purposes, app functionality purposes and for marketing communications, but only if the customer requests to receive those marketing communications. Samsung is in no way inappropriately using or selling any information obtained from users through the download process.

EPIC is currently not only asking the FTC to just investigate Samsung, but also requested that they restrict Samsung’s “data collection to the user data necessary to run the app” and “delete the user data that was improperly obtained.”

Only time will tell what will come of the matter, but with so many users of the app complaining initially with the album’s unveiling, it’ll be interesting to see if similar tactics will be implemented in the future. Let us know your thoughts down below.