Spotify Privacy Oversight Exposes Celebrity Playlists in Panama Playlists Leak
A recent discovery dubbed the Panama Playlists has exposed the music tastes of several high-profile individuals, from politicians to tech figures, thanks to Spotify’s default privacy settings. While not a traditional cybersecurity breach, the incident highlights how easily personal data—even something as seemingly harmless as playlist choices—can become public without users realizing it.
Unlike a hacked database, the Panama Playlists were compiled simply by searching for public playlists linked to notable names. Spotify defaults new playlists to public visibility, meaning unless users manually adjust their settings, their listening habits are accessible to anyone who looks. The creator of Panama Playlists took advantage of this, curating a collection of tracks from figures like Vice President JD Vance, tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Some of the findings are amusingly on-brand. JD Vance’s Making Dinner playlist includes the Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way, while Karoline Leavitt’s features Aretha Franklin’s Respect—a fitting choice for a press secretary. Other highlights include Sam Bankman-Fried’s loud playlist with Khalid’s Young Dumb Broke and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s Focus Alpha playlist, which boasts Billions and Billions.
While the playlists themselves are mostly harmless, the situation underscores Spotify’s questionable privacy practices. The platform not only sets playlists to public by default but also requires users to manually change each existing playlist to private—a tedious process many may overlook. Additionally, user profiles display followers and followed accounts unless adjusted in settings.
For crypto and privacy-conscious users, this serves as a reminder that streaming platforms often double as social networks, sharing more data than intended. Whether it’s wallet activity or Spotify playlists, default settings rarely prioritize user privacy. If you’d prefer your guilty pleasure tracks stay private, it’s worth revisiting your Spotify settings—before someone adds them to the next Panama Playlists.
