For those who are still fans (fanatics?) of iTunes and all things Apple, I suggest reading this:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1910646,00.asp

Turns out that Apple has taken a page out of RealNetworks' playbook and, in the latest iTunes release, has started to quietly send back packets from iTunes clients back to Apple and Akamai servers upon playback of any locally stored content. Apparently, iTunes "phones home" as soon as you listen to content in your local library in "Ministore" mode. There are also questions about whether DRM authentication is performed through this mechanism?

Apple's comment is that it any personal information collected from iTunes users is discarded. Do you believe that? If you're an iTunes user, does this change your take about the product?