Spotify and Facebook: Is that phishing? 13 years ago
Spotify is able to do this because they have partnered with Facebook. Facebook has white listed them for a set of API's that allow them to convert a Facebook User/Password into a Facebook auth token. Any time this whitelisted API is called the application that called it is automatically added to the users list of applications. Spotify is then white listed (by Facebook) for a second set of API's that allow them to add any permission available to the Facebook access token they were issued. This is why you see permissions being added to the application that were not clearly communicated. Facebook requires partners that are on these white lists to clearly communicate what is happening, but IMO Spotify does a particularly poor job of this.