How does spotify know who my facebook friends are?

[Psycho_Penguin]

I've never connected my facebook profile with my spotify account (I signed up before it was mandatory) yet today I noticed that my facebook friends were listed on the right in the activity log. How did you get access to this info if I've never connected the two things? Is there a way I can disconnect my facebook profile from spotify?

Below is an image showing my unconnected account yet with my friends down the right side.

[Richard]

Did you have these users added in Spotify Social (ie. not via Facebook) ?

Say for instance I added user x to my people in Spotify. If x then connected their account to Facebook, they would show up in the People List with their name. I think this could explain what's happened here.

[Psycho_Penguin]

Nope, I've never added any of those people to my spotify social list.

[Richard]

I'm still wracking my brains here. Obviously if the two were never connected then there is no way this information could be fetched. (We wouldn't even know which account to grab the info from).

Had anyone else signed into Spotify on your computer beforehand? If so, and they were connected to Facebook, then I suppose it's possible the data to populate the feed could have remained cached there.

[jptiger]

The same thing happened to me! I got my account before facebook was needed and very specifically have avoided linking facebook with spotify. But one day I booted up spotify and it had my name, facebook picture, and friends list. I'm a little creeped out by this. Anyone have any ideas how this happened and how to reverse it?

[Peter__]

If you have clicked a Spotify link whilst logged into Facebook it might have linked your account. 

You should be able to disconnect in the desktop client by going to Edit/Spotify > Preferences > Social Network > Disconnect from Facebook.

Peter

[hoojaa]

I have just installed Spotify on a new laptop and this has happened to me. It is listing my Facebook friends and showing a little icon of my Facebook profile picture. I am very privacy conscious and have everything on private in Facebook; I do not have the Spotify app installed on Facebook; and I have a Spotify log in from many years ago meaning I never entered any Facebook information on Spotify.

Under preferences>social network there is no option to 'disconnect from Facebook' as I am NOT connected to Facebook - the only option is to CONNECT to Facebook, and clicking that brings up a Facebook log-in screen that does not have my details pre-completed - because I never gave them to Spotify.

So where the hell is Spotify getting my Facebook information from? The only source I can think of is that it used my email address, which I supplied when I registered with Spotify, and looked me up on Facebook using it, and was granted access to my information without my knowledge.

I cannot see any options on Spotify or on Facebook to break this link - nothing that even acknowledges there IS a link.

I am very, very unhappy about this. If there are more like me out there this will be a big problem for Spotify.

[Peter__]

What is your Spotify username @hoojaa ?

[User001]

I am also facing the same issue. I have never connected to facebook before and am surprise that my facebook profile page is being used as my spotify profile pic.

This is very frustrating and I am honestly unhappy about it. Can anything even be done about this?

[vologya]

Hi, I've just experienced the same issue. Finally on Facebook I turned off one-by-one the settings that otherwise allow my data to be transferred to any applications used by my friends. Although my name and profile picture has not yet disappeared on Spotify. I'm pretty unhappy with this. I don't necessary want to consider ending my registration on Spotify but in this case it feels like my privacy is not very much valued by Spotify.