Audacity has been around for over 21 years and classes as the world's most popular audio editing software.

All that changed in April when Muse Group bought the company. At the time it promised that the software would "remain forever free and open source". However, as FOSS Post reports, last week the Audacity privacy policy page was updated and introduced changes to the personal data collection clauses.

The data collected includes OS version and name, user country based on IP address, the CPU being used, data related to Audacity error codes and crash reports, and finally "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities' requests (if any)".

The personal data collected can be shared with Muse Group employees, auditors, advisors, legal representatives and "similar agents", potential company buyers, and "any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third parties where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, or (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights".

So the fear is that while the software remains free and open sauce it now has the option of being a data harvester and could allow access to coppers and spooks.

To be fair, there are similarities in the privacy policy to the European Data protection law wording so there might not be much to worry about and it does not appear that data is going to be flogged to the highest bidder.