A Bit of Quasi-Concern About New Plex Privacy Policy

[DrKK]

I don't understand all the details, and I don't care that much. But this is clearly a thing. I am just going to put it out there for you all, and invite you to adjudicate the situation for yourselves.

On or around 18 August 2017, the Plex people sent out a mass email, indicating that there would be some changes to their privacy policy. All of us, as a result of the trends and realities of the past decade, of course, are now trained to go into King Cobra Hooded Defense mode when you get a nonchalant email about "changes" to "privacy policies". It was the usual kind of thing...which I will now paraphrase:

"Oh yeah, hi guys. Yeah so this is totally no big deal, and this is really totally nothing at all, and well hey, we will be making some very minor changes to the privacy policy that we are like so embarrassed to even have to waste your time in email about these changes but like we have to do it because of ridiculous lawyers lolololol anyway yeah they go into effect on 20 September, and here's a link for additional clarity, if you really feel you must know more information, but this is really totally nothing. Plex on! Woop woop Plex yo!!! Yours Truly, {Silly Comedic Self-Reference to Make Everything Seem Casual}".

Which, of course, put me on code-red-uber-jihad alert, instantly.

So anyway, that day, you would click their link, and there's a few totally irrelevant things that you know damn well they'd never put out an email about. And then they spring something that caught my attention: "Yeah also lolololol so you will no longer be able to opt-out of sending Plex your information about your use of the media server. But that's totally cool because we won't sell any information. And there's going to be a lot of third parties with new cool stuff, and they need this information, that's all, lol."

People weren't buying it.

And *THEN* there was a bit of jihad on their forums. And ***THEN*** they actually CHANGED the content of the aforementioned link to *REMOVE* the information that you could no longer opt-out. Which really concerned me. It's still the case that you can no longer opt-out, that was truthful, BUT, now it's buried deeper instead of front and center. So here's the deal, at least as far as I can understand, as of this moment (20 August 2017, noon on the USA East Coast):

• This is now their first stab landing page. It wouldn't surprise me if this page is going to change about 2 or 3 more times. So whatever you see when you click may be different than what I'm talking about. This is the page that had the "money shot" about not being able to opt-out, and what that meant, removed from view in the past 24 hours. If that doesn't satisfy you, they pull the curtain back a little more in:
• This page, which they hope sates you. This now restores the original information, albeit in an implicit way, that "opt-out" is not longer going to be possible. If you are still not sated,
• You are directed to this, the formal policy. This itself leads to various formal legalisms, such as this.

It looks to me like there are more and more and more and more "third party" elements to Plex, and if you use any of those, then all bets could be off, depending on whatever deal and licensing has been worked out between these guys.

Bottom line: I don't know what to make of it. I will continue to use Plex, I'm not too concerned about it, but I know a lot of you guys out there have a very, very low tolerance for data-sharing, privacy etc etc etc, and this is surely way over your smell test line. So I thought I'd let you know, if you use Plex.

I tried to search our FreeNAS forum for this information and didn't find anything, which surprised me, since I thought a lot of people would notice/care about this. I apologize if I'm duplicating a thread.

I want to stress that I will continue to use Plex, that I myself assume that any information of this type is already spread out there far and wide and this doesn't even move the needle. But that's my view. I know most of you are way, way, way more hard core about this than I am, and will want to consider your options.

By all means, if someone has better/more information, please put it in the thread.

 

[DrKK]

Also, for the record, the above was my 3000th post on the FreeNAS Forums.

It has been a pleasure to serve the FreeNAS Community over the past few years.

 

[Jailer]

I thought about posting something but didn't since I wanted to research it a bit more. I've been following that thread on the Plex forums where a lot of members are foaming at the mouth over it.

Me personally I'm not too worried about it, the privacy genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago and if this policy change by Plex gets you lathered up you better not check into what google does......

 

[DrKK]

I thought about posting something but didn't since I wanted to research it a bit more. I've been following that thread on the Plex forums where a lot of members are foaming at the mouth over it.

Me personally I'm not too worried about it, the privacy genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago and if this policy change by Plex gets you lathered up you better not check into what google does......

Great minds think alike.

 

[adrianwi]

Plex has been heading in this direction ever since they stopped you being able to connect to your local server unless you were logged into your Plex.tv account. Whilst they backed down a little on this, it's still much easier to do everything whilst logged in, which is how I suspect 99.9% of people use Plex.

For me, the inability to opt-out of data collection was a worry as they had provided very little details around what this actually meant and specifically what data they would be collecting about my personal media library. They've now stepped back on this, and will be providing further details about what can and cannot be opted out of, so until this is known it's difficult to say whether it's acceptable or not.

It did make me spend a couple of hours recreating my Emby jail (it was still running 9.3 so wouldn't update to the latest version) just to compare and contrast again. Whilst it's not as polished as Plex, it does most of what Plex can, and in some areas provides a greater level of control. I've been using Plex for several years now, and bought a lifetime PlexPass back in 2013. I love it, but at the same time, don't necessarily agree with the direction they appear to be taking. I just want something to manage my local media content, which Plex does brilliantly. I quite like the fact I can now watch TV through the same interface and record programmes too, but I don't see it replacing my Virgin TiVo service anytime too. Cutting the cord still seems some way off, and I suspect it will be some entirely different technology that eventually makes that happen.

Will be watching with interest over the next few weeks....

 

[m0nkey_]

The email I received was a handy reminder to cancel my Plex Pass. I've not been using any of the Plex Pass features in the last 6 months so I'm just going back to the free membership. I'm not going to stop using Plex, it's too good not to use.

 

[Stux]

Sounds inexcusable to me :(

Make it opt out. Make it hard to opt out. But make it opt out.

Simply inexcusable.

I get it. You can monetize ratings and demographics info for hyper targeted advertising.

Make it opt out, or the only way to opt out is to opt out of plex. Which I think I may just do.

 

[DrKK]

Well you know, with a lot of "Aunt Sally"s now with Smart TV's and mobile devices with Plex built in, the demographic of who is using this stuff is expanding. If all the hard core privacy nerds quit using their software, I'm not sure how significant of a quorum that now is in their demographic admixture. They may not care/mind.

 

[gpsguy]

After all the backlash they have received, they will allow users to opt-out. I saw articles on /. and BetaNews while at lunch today.

 

[DrKK]

After all the backlash they have received, they will allow users to opt-out. I saw articles on /. and BetaNews while at lunch today.

gpsguy:

I think it would be good if you (or someone) could update this thread with the relevant final dispositions of the issue, since I suspect this thread will be fairly widely read.

 

[gpsguy]

Here's the link to the story on Slashdot - https://entertainment.slashdot.org/...ill-allow-users-to-opt-out-of-data-collection

Another one on betanews - https://betanews.com/2017/08/21/plex-data-collection-opt-out-backtrack/

I read Slashdot and betanews, on my lunch hour. And, use a cellphone during the day to access FreeNAS. I can barely edit a post, much less include URL's using a phone.

gpsguy:

I think it would be good if you (or someone) could update this thread ...

 

[ovizii]

The email I received was a handy reminder to cancel my Plex Pass. I've not been using any of the Plex Pass features in the last 6 months so I'm just going back to the free membership. I'm not going to stop using Plex, it's too good not to use.

And would going back to the free version change anything with regards to their privacy policy?

 

[ovizii]

Sounds inexcusable to me :(

Make it opt out. Make it hard to opt out. But make it opt out.

Simply inexcusable.

I get it. You can monetize ratings and demographics info for hyper targeted advertising.

Make it opt out, or the only way to opt out is to opt out of plex. Which I think I may just do.

I read some official Plex statement and from what I could understand they said that they can't make it opt-out out as they would be lying as any 3rd party implementation DOES collect certain data which cannot be influenced by Plex.

 

[adrianwi]

Well, the policy has been updated - https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-policy-update/and will take effect - from 26 September 2017. Doesn't look like it has addressed many of the concerns, with the biggest issue for me that any opt-out is configured at a user level and not server wide. Given I have a number of family and friends accessing my server, unless I know they have all opted out then Plex will still be able to collect and store data from my server. Even though they say this is anonymised, I just don't feel comfortable with Plex storing this.

I've fired up an Emby jail and whilst it's not as polished as Plex, it provides most of the functionality I need from a media server.

UPDATE: After using emby in anger for just under a week, I'm pretty impressed. I've been able to configure it to provide secure local and remote access without any users having to be logged into Emby Connect (think plex.tv) and although it took several hours to cleanse the metadata, it's now working well. Ok, it doesn't look as nice as Plex but it also doesn't seem to have all the little bugs that are around in most Plex clients - you know, the ones Plex seem to just forget about and move on to the next greatest thing, like a News feed (really Plex?) I've started to invite my friends and family and their response had been largely positive too, although I think they were just happy to have access again after I'd take Plex offline. Whilst I'd still say Plex is the better solution overall, emby isn't as far behind as you might think, and I don't get the impression their goal is to collect as much data as they can from your media server, which is certainly the impression Plex are sending out. The support community is also much more responsive, with actual replies from the emby team, something that's been missing from the Plex forum for some time.