EA's 'Invasion of Privacy' Policy

Justus writes "Gamers with Jobs has posted an article covering EA's privacy policy for Xbox Live users. In a nutshell, by using an EA game over Xbox Live, you are automatically creating an 'EA Online' account and granting Electronic Arts the ability to collect your name, address, and credit card information, as well as a variety of demographic information about how you use their products. Not only that, they explicitly say that they may tie these demographics to your personal information — no anonymous aggregation here! When Gamers with Jobs asked EA and Microsoft about these issues, they were met with stony silence, a fact they attribute to the pending release of the new Madden game next week. Without an official comment from the companies involved, it certainly looks like EA has the most invasive privacy policy they could come up with."

just don't use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another reason to keep things like online play and online purchasing very separate. Use the PC to buy stuff, use the console to play games. There's a reason my Xbox is behind a firewall that doesn't let the outside world touch it. That ethernet jack is just there for me.

(PS first!)

Most invasive?

[hchaput]

Most invasive? Hyperpolize much?

Here is the privacy policy from the Safeway Club Card [safeway.com]:

SAFEWAY CLUB CARD CUSTOMER
AGREEMENT STATEMENT
We respect your privacy. Safeway does not sell or lease personally identifying information (i.e., your name, address, telephone number, and bank and credit card account numbers) to non-affiliated companies or entities. We do record information regarding the purchases made with your Safeway Club Card to help us provide you with special offers and other information. Safeway also may use this information to provide you with personally tailored coupons, offers or other information that may be provided to Safeway by other companies.

Funny, too, that TFA picked EA's policy and didn't look at any other game company. Not to mention the fact that EA is gathering information that you provide. Sound like the kind of stupid EA bashing you would get from an astroturfing competitor.

Re:Most invasive?

[joe 155]

I don't know how that safeway card works (I'm assuming that they are the super-market you are refering to...) but if it is like the tesco club cards then they are taking your data, which is tied to your name and address, but only about things which directly concern them (ie. items they have sold to you and not credit card info) AND they actually pay you for it.

Tesco gives you 1p in the £1 of all you spend with them for the data which they are taking. Some people would think that this isn't worth it, so you can just not have one and still use their products and buy from them.

It seems with EA you have to do this or not use a product which you have paid for, which is a bit bad

Here. If you don't like it do something.

[gsn]

Section 5 of the FTC Act [ftc.gov]

The Commission has also used its unfairness authority to challenge information practices that cause substantial consumer injury.

Heres an information practice that could cause substantial consumer injury. EA is collecting my address, phone number, birth date, name, credit card information - usually the only other piece of information you need to charge the card is the three digit number at the back of the card. Some websites don't even require that. If you win a prize you also get to give them your SSN!!!

Do you trust your security to a three digit number? Do you trust a giant company to not have any disgruntled employees with access to the database? And a paper and pencil to circumvent the copy restrictions on the data (if they have that even). I trust EA to publish (mostly crappy sports) games and thats all. None of the other information they collect is necessary to run EA online. The very fact that they are collecting data they do not need makes me actively distrust them. This entire implictly agreeing to hand your data over smells fishy.

See that "File a complaint" [ftc.gov] link on the top of the FTC webpage. Ten minutes. Slashdot the damn thing - I'm sure the FTC will take notice. At very least they should be able to contact Microsoft and EA and be able to change what data is collected. Seriously the best way to deal with a stupid bunch of corporate lawyers is have a government agency snarl at them.

Re:Not surprising...

[jalefkowit]

The only problem with your description is that Call of Duty games [callofduty.com] are not published by EA; they're published by Activision [activision.com]. So maybe you should be griping about them and not EA.

Re:It's stories like this one...

[Chosen Reject]

can you name a movie in the public domain?

How about Night of the Living Dead? [archive.org] I downloaded that legally last year before Halloween. Try it out some time.

Re:It's stories like this one...

[mmalove]

Well, on a somewhat less expensive solution, you could just write your congressman / woman yourself. While everything I've ever sent to the oval office has gone into the trash, I actually did get a response back from my House rep the other day. Most people think about it as a great idea, few people actually do it. But if it's any incentive, the fewer people that do something the more weight granted to those that do. For example, when you vote, if only half the eligible voters turn out, your opinion counts for two. In the example of writing to your congressman, if only 1 per 1000 do it, your opinion counts for a 1000 people. If this post encourages 1000 people to write to Congress, I've essentially just persuaded a million people. That's real change.

If everyone that read this actually wrote a letter to congress (write to your rep, not just to congress as a whole) seeking stronger privacy laws, with a simple but well framed arguement why it's important to us, you would see real change. But we've got to make it an issue, because they are receiving letters every day about the war(s), about immigration, about the minimum wage increase. If you don't let them know it's important to you, even a strong advocate of privacy will have a hard time moving legislation through the commitees and floor. A PAC might buy us a representative or two in Congress, but it won't be enough to get people looking at the importance of the issue.

If you don't know how to get ahold of your rep, or for lack of political participation can't figure out who your rep is, visit here : www.congress.org

But be careful! I've read through their privacy policy, and it, much like EA's, is pretty invasive, including the option to sell your personal information. Still, you can use their site to figure out who you want to contact, and take matters to your own hands from there.

Best wishes /.ers,
Mike