Sonos took their Sonos One smart speaker and made it dumb. Seems there is a market for privacy-minded people who just want a speaker for playing music, not with a built-in microphone that could be spying on you. This Sonos One SL is just like the Sonos One minus the microphone listening for Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant commands. Control it with the Sonos app over WiFi, not Bluetooth, or use Apple Airplay to stream your music. To think, a speaker simply built to play music and not listen to you all day long. Crazy!
What could happen if something goes wrong?
The Sonos One SL is a very good privacy-minded speaker. It has no built-in microphone to listen, record, or send data back to Sonos, Amazon or Google, so not a whole lot can go wrong. And Sonos does a pretty good job with privacy and security as a whole. Sonos did have a small privacy goof early in 2020 when they sent an email to 450 customers and revealed all of their email addresses to each other. To be fair, we've all probably made a mistake like that so we'll cut them a little slack. All in all, there’s not a lot that can go wrong with this speaker in your house because it’s, well, it’s really just a speaker. One more thing. If you decide to use Sonos Radio, a $7.99 subscription service that plays you curated music and lets you tune into over 60,000 radio stations around the world, Sonos will share some anonymized data with third party advertisers for internet based ads. This isn't a huge deal though, so we're not too worried about it.
Tips to protect yourself
- If you are using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, adjust the respective privacy settings of the service.
- Opt out from additional usage data collection
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: No
App: No
Microphone
Device: No
App: No
Tracks location
Device: No
App: Yes
What can be used to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
No
What data does the company collect?
Personal
Name, email, phone number, password
Body related
Social
How does the company use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?
An email sent by Sonos to 450 customers revealed all of their email addresses to each other in January 2020. In 2017, a security vulnerability left some Sonos speakers vulnerable.
Can this product be used offline?
User-friendly privacy information?
Links to privacy information
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
Uses encryption in transit and at rest.
Strong password
Security updates
Automatic updates are enabled by default.
Manages vulnerabilities
Sonos does not have an official bug bounty program, but invites disclosure of security bugs.
Privacy policy
Sonos does provide an intro to the privacy policy that contains its guiding principles.
Does the product use AI?
Comments
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