So I recently saw the tutorial about your AirPlay project. I tried it and I have it installed but I’m still working on getting it to actually play anything. So far no sound.
But this post is about something else. I notice that it is sending latitude and longitude (and who knows what else) to the balena cloud. I can think of no legitimate reason for this for an airplay or bluetooth device. This seems like gratuitous if not outright evil data gathering.
- What is the rationale for collecting such data?
- is there a list of all the data that is collected?
- Is there any way to run the airplay/bluetooth without balena cloud?
Hi there, and welcome to the forums. You are correct, the Lat/Long is reported and rendered by a Geo lookup of the IP Address. The reason for this is due to the underlying business use-case of balenaCloud, which is IoT Device and Fleet Management at scale. When customers have large fleets of devices, it’s helpful to see them visually represented and online / offline on a map. In the single-device use case of balenaSound, it’s not as critical, sure.
With that said, you can view our Privacy Policy which covers the data we collect, here: https://www.balena.io/privacy-policy
Hope that helps.
Hi Thanks for the quick response. Is there a way to disable lat/long? I seem to keep turning of the VPN somehow when I try.
No, there is no direct ability to disable Lat/Long, you can however override and set the values to any arbitrary values you prefer. While on the Device details, click on Location on the left, then click on Options on the map.
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Fantastic! Thank you so much.