Comment 7 for bug 1372000

Requests are sent to https://dash.ubuntu.com. It's basically a cache in front of another service that can provide artwork (currently 7digital).

The requests made by the thumbnailer contain the artist, album, and an API key. Even if dash.ubuntu.com would want to spy on your album collection (it doesn't), what it could learn would be limited to the information it gets from the incoming HTTP headers and the incoming connection.

Turning online art lookup off is possible, but only on a system-wide basis because the thumbnailer is shared among a number of applications and scopes. Making this option available would require design input though.