A Reddit user running the Mac application Little Snitch 4 discovered that Skylum’s Luminar photo editor is “calling home” to Facebook while the app is in use, allegedly for “analytics purposes.”
The discovery was made by u/numblock699, who posted about the find on r/photography and r/privacytoolsIO earlier today. He noticed the anomaly as soon as he installed and booted up Luminar 4 on a new machine—testing was done on both Mac and PC—so the setting seems to be on by default, though we can’t find a way to turn this sharing off in-program.
When asked about the issue over Twitter DM, Skylum—the makers of Luminar—replied that the data collection is “done for analytic purposes.”
“Kindly note that the information we obtain with the help of in-app analytics does not provide any means for personal identification, i.e. it’s not connected to a name, email address, or other personal information in any way,” wrote the customer service rep. “Please take a moment to review our user agreement, in particular, the sections ‘When you use our products’ and ‘Your Data that we collect’.”
u/numblock699 send PetaPixel the full reply from Skylum, which you can read below:
There’s no way to know for sure what information is being passed back and forth, but u/numblock699 says that blocking the traffic between Luminar and Facebook ” doesn’t seem to cripple the software in any way.”
We’ve reached out to Skylum for comment/clarification on what kind of data is being shared, why it’s being shared, and if there is a way to opt-out in-program. We’ll update this post if and when we hear back.
(via Reddit)
Image credits: Image by Reddit user u/numblock699, and used with permission.
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