Spotify says that 2 million users of its free ad-supported music service have used hacked apps to block ads in the last few months. The revelation came in a Friday morning SEC filing that also included lower user and total hours streamed counts than it previously reported.
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In a Friday SEC filing, Spotify revealed that since the start of 2018, 2 million users of its free ad-supported have accessed hacked apps in order to block ads. The hacked accounts also led Spotify to downgrade total users from 159 million to 157 million and total hours streamed lfom 40.3 billion to 39.8 billion last year.
“On March 21, 2018, we detected instances of approximately two million users as of December 31, 2017, who have been suppressing advertisements without payment,” the streamer said in the amended F-1 filing.
Warning From Spotify
Earlier this month, Spotify promised to suspend users of unauthorized apps. The company then contacted users of hacked, modified or unauthorized apps and disabled their accounts. “We detected abnormal activity on the app you are using so we have disabled it,” wrote Spotify. “Don’t worry – your Spotify account is safe.”
Hacking Spotify has not been restricted to tech savvy users. Easily found YouTube videos sharing how to hack the music streamer have logged more than 500,00o views.