Bose slapped with a lawsuit alleging it spies on customers

Do you own a Bose headphone? If yes, then this news might come as a shock to you. A lawsuit has been filed against Bose Corp, accusing them of spying on its wireless headphone customers through an app that tracks and distributes their data without permission.

The complaint, which was filed by Kyle Zak in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday, claims that the headphone company's Bose Connect app violates the users' privacy rights by sharing their entire listening history with third-party data mining companies. The lawsuit alleges that Bose has broken the Federal Wiretap Act, the Illinois Eavesdropping Statute, and consumer fraud and invasion of privacy laws.

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"The danger with undisclosed and unexplained data collection is, the world is open to these companies to do what they want," said Christopher Dore, the lawyer who is defending Zak.

Zak said that he paid $350 for his Bose's QuietComfort 35 headphones and then downloaded its app. The app requested his name, email id and headphone serial number during the installation.

However, he didn't expect the company to send his media information from his phone to a data collection and analysis firm called Segment, which collects customer data and sends it anywhere.

The lawsuit also said that the audio history of a customer can disclose a lot about his personal preferences and views. For example, if a person is listening to Muslim prayers then he is very likely to belong to the same religion.

As of now, the headphone company has not made any responses yet.