A group session took over my speaker

[kmc2340]

Plan

Free/Premium premium 

Country Australia 

Device iPhone 10

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System: IOS

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

I was listening to Spotify through my google home speaker this afternoon - having initiated the session on my iPhone.  I had been listening to one of my Library lists for a couple of hours when suddenly the song that was playing stopped half way through and a completely unknown song (not from my list) started playing. I had not touched my phone or said anything to the google speaker.  So I picked up my phone to see what was going on. It said I had joined a group session with someone named Andrew something. (I don’t remember his last name and I did not recognise his name. He is not connected to me in any way - on Spotify or through any other social media account.). I have never heard of group sessions before so I didn’t know what was happening.  I selected the song I had been playing before from my list but it only played for about 5 seconds before another song unknown to me came on. I tried to play my song again. And then I got a message to say that Andrew had left the group session.  

So tell me. How did someone I don’t know start playing music on my Inhome speaker WITHOUT MY PERMISSION? How did he add me to a group session WITHOUT MY PERMISSION? And more importantly - how do I stop this from happening again?? 

THIS SEEMS LIKE A SERIOUS BREACH OF BOTH SECURITY AND PRIVACY TO ME. I would appreciate an early response.  

[k4Anarky]

After taking some convincing from a coworker, I finally tried premium after years and years of not trusting the system to provide by downloading/ripping MP3s directly into my phone. But so far I'm loving how much music I have access to as well as having new music introduced to me, loving especially the downloading feature. I thought this was THE app, the one that will convince me to abandon the musical wilderness wading through spyware and viruses, to finally rejoin the safety and cleanliness of civilization.

But suddenly this morning the app gave me a jarring notification that "Multiple people is going to have access to my speaker", as well as my profile name and who knows what else. You know, everything was going so perfectly and there was a moment when I thought that nothing could possibly go wrong. Why Spotify, why do you have to go ruin a perfectly good thing that you had going on? This reminds me of why I opted out of all these apps years and years ago. Even so, I don't think most normal people would care about sharing music with others, especially something as invasive as taking over someone else's speaker and showing usernames (What if my username is something like xxxBiCowboyHoboButShecks69xxx... I don't want people to see that, especially in a small household... with children present), and luckily I don't think I have ever met someone who is so obnoxious as forcing others to listen to their music without asking for permission first. Also a lot of us just prefer the comfort of having the ease-of-use and discoveries of Spotify, we don't want the social stuff. Theoretically if I was a social butterfly like the fine people who works at Spotify, and if I ever invite my 160 real friends to a really lit party, trust me we would individually connect to the Bluetooth speaker and keep that connection private. We wouldn't allow Bob from 2 blocks away to have the opportunity to enhance his daily Wagner session by connecting to our speaker. (Like me, Bob is probably a caveman and still uses questionable MP3s)

Sorry for the rant, but I think I'm going to hold on to my MP3s for now. I stepped out from underneath my rock and take in the smog and noises of society for a moment, but the cons just really outweigh the pros. I could still unga bunga MP3s into my phones and still get the same enjoyment out of music, without all these invasive connectivity features. 

[iamheartshaped]

Hi there. Just to say I have this issue and it happened in a really upsetting and scary way. My WiFi at home is totally private and password protected. My husband is military and away a lot and I am often home alone with my 2 young kids. This evening someone hacked into all my speakers via Spotify, and played X rated sounds at top volume across all my speakers at once. It was so loud and honestly terrifying, it woke both my kids up who cried their eyes out. It felt so invasive and scary and it took me a moment to realise what had happened and unlink all my speakers from my Spotify to stop the noise. I assume it's teenagers playing pranks but as I was sat alone at almost 10pm it didn't feel funny to me at all. This is the stupidest feature I've ever encountered and I still don't understand how they managed it if not connected to my WiFi. It scared the life out of me. I really really hope Spotify considers better containing this feature. 

[Megan118]

When on the same wifi, even with this feature turned off, people are still joining my speakers. Can this be stopped ? 

[Jeremy101]

I am having exactly the same issues as above and have the same concerns. Can we get a property response please. 

[frammus]

This just happened to me at 4am this morning. All of a sudden my Marantz home theater system woke up and starting blaring music while we were alseep. No clue how this occurred until my daughter in law told us tonight that she couldn't get spotify to play on her iPhone and so she selected Marantz in her Spotify app and it started playing on my system. She doesn't live with us and was not on the our network when she did this. So at some point when she joined my wifi network it got cached in the cloud at Spotify so anyone can theoretically access my home theater system by accessing Spotify's cloud service that actually has the connection to my system. This is a massive security hole and needs to be fixed ASAP. The relationship has to be between the actual device and my speaker and be on the same network and not the cloud and my devices or at least the question needs to be asked of the home user whether or not to allow a remote user to access their systems. This is scary. 

[kmc2340]

Wow. That is scary.

[Faru2]

If your speakers have Bluetooth and are "smart" like my Soundbar back home, they might have a setting called something like "Bluetooth availability" (my soundbars setting for this was "Auto VA"). If it has that sort of setting enabled, it's letting other people within range see your speakers listed in their phone as a Bluetooth device that's open & available to connect to, regardless if they're on the same Wi-Fi or not. In my case, I turned off the "Auto VA" setting on my soundbar and it effectively turned off Bluetooth entirely, but we only have it connected to the TV anyway. No issues since. (This sort of setting is also how guests are able to "cast" videos from their phone to your smart TV, even if they're not on the same network. If you value privacy, turn it off on your TV as well).