Slashdot Mirror
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."
The number of people actually paying Microsoft for the privilege of playing online with the Xbox 360 is so small that when Microsoft put out a press release a few months ago they intentionally did not mention actual paying subscribers. Instead they only talked about people who had simply connected their 360 to the Net.
The first Xbox only had some 5-7 percent of owners willing to pay Microsoft to play online. The number of paying subscribers must be even smaller this time if they don't want to even mention the number.
In a nutshell, yeah it probably sucks, but who really cares?
Is there a single slashdotter who is in any way surprised by this? Is there anyone so naive as to believe that private companies are the best guardians of your privacy? Even the most rapid laissez faire capitalist would hesitate before declaring your valuable data safe from explotation at the hands of the private sector.
Your data is worth money. Marketers are willing to buy it. Hence, companies will be willing and eager to sell it. They don't care. They're private companies, beholden to no one except their shareholders.
If you would like to give your explicit approval to this buy buying such a game, or tacit approval by buying any other EA game, then do so. That is your right. Just don't complain when your playing habits are vomited all over the net like so many AOL search results.
May the Maths Be with you!
Except educating the general public on privacy isn't an easy reason as to why they shouldn't play the latest version of Madden. There needs to be a pointed attack on EA by the media and lobbying firms for movements like this. Simply "boycot" solutions are non-solutions. Madden is probably one of the best selling games in the United States, and while I find it deplorable that an online service would take advantage of consumer confidence to literally spy on them in means for more invasive than any New York Times article about Bush. Certainly, it's a sad day for privacy as the leaders of the industry use their mass appeal to break the resistance of the people more interested in protecting the historical wall of online privacy than playing video games.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Wonder when they start broadcasting "live shows" from users' webcams.
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I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have a DS and I play online a lot. It is easy for me to find and open and unsecured hotspot in this city and when I play Mario Kart or Metroid, I dont have to input and username, password or credit card information. Online playing it's completely anonymous, fast and free, yet astounding fun.
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Why can't EA learn from Nintendo?
More info on http://www.nintendowifi.com/customersupport/Suppo
I found some very odd little registry setting installed on my computer, thought it was a worm or something, but when I looked in it, it had a list of all EA titles on my computer. The worst was that when I installed the CoD expansion pack, it tried to phone home w/o even telling me, it just went ahead and opened up a dial-up connection running as Network Service. To me, that sounds like they infiltrated my computer. Games should not (and most do not) require administrator rights to install, but EA games do. If a game requires admin rights, that's a red flag. If only CoD2 wasn't so freaking good...
This, to me, is spyware, and customer data collection needs to be conspicuously disclosed (not buried in an EULA*), and it needs to be opt-in only, by law.
* The most infuriating part is that I read the EULA for CoD/CoD2, and I didn't see anything about them collecting my data and sending it home. They didn't disclose it at all.
Hear, hear!
/. style issues, you know fixing IP law (can you name a movie in the public domain?), protecting privacy, withdrawing from WIPO, dismembering the DMCA, etc. Kinda like the EFF, but for convincing Congress to protect our personal information, our computers, our rights, etc. Everybody donates $20 bucks, and before you know it, we've got a couple million dollars to lobby with. You know, if freaking PETA can do it, I think the slashdot community can do it, and if we did, I bet Congress would pay attention.
You know, slashdot has so many readers, we ought to form a PAC for
Well, my dictionaries don't agree with the wording of your definition, but that's somewhat beside the point. Even using your definitions, how can an inalienable right possibly be removed by a corporation?
If you want to be philosophical about it, then the only rights you truly have are those which are prepared to die defending, because ultimately anything else can be taken from you. We therefore invent modifiers like "legal" (those rights the law says you should have) and "moral" (those rights that someone believes you should have according to their personal ethical standards) to give us more practical concepts of "rights". We can then proceed on the assumption that someone does have the rights they should have according to the relevant authority.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.