Avatar Roku said:
I actually had heard some of that (I think Root Of All Evil mentioned it on some thread yesterday), but I too am surprised at the lack of outrage. That is absolutely ridiculous.
Heh, nice to know I'm remembered
Yeah, grab any EULAs with your fine tooth comb and have a look at what they let the companies do
that directly and illegally interferes with your rights. It's doubtful that they would use the EULA to those extremes, but it's only the bad publicity that's going to stop them.
Here's a quick bait and switch from EA's.
WHEN YOU USE ANY ONLINE GAME, SERVICE or WEBSITE FROM ELECTRONIC ARTS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTOOD, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS.
http://legal.ea.com/legal/legal.jsp?language=en
Hidden until you call it up, but legally binding simply by going to www.ea.com - so you acknowledge it without knowing it.
(IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY EA SITE, ONLINE OR MOBILE PRODUCT OR SERVICE.)
- which you have to to see this.
(And because it's in a pop-up, you can't easily use "Find" on it)
EA may collect personal information from our online visitors during:
Contest registration and prize acceptance;
Warranty registration and requests;
Customer support and/or technical service requests;
Player match up and other head-to-head online competitions;
Registration for games and/or special game-specific events;
Newsletter subscriptions, referral services, and other marketing surveys and email campaigns;
Registration for EA and/or other service accounts;
Product, service and/or subscription orders;
Service requests from third party service providers on our site; and
Otherwise through use of our software, mobile or online services where personal information is required for use and/or participation.
Information collected will vary depending upon the activity and may include your name, email address, phone number, home address, birth date, mobile phone number and credit card information.
They don't HAVE to, but they can.
We may also receive other personal information from third parties in connection with the operation and distribution of our products and services as well as market and demographic studies that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.
Anything our hirelings find out is fair game.
When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or console, we may collect certain non-personal demographic information including gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, media, mobile device, mobile device ID, console ID, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as feature usage, game play statistics and scores, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles or through purchases, for instance.
A lot of this information is restricted under the various Data Protection Acts, but the top part of the contract says that you waive your rights to be protected by that law. That's actually wrong in a lot of countries, as you cannot waive your own rights.
Clear GIFs (a.k.a. web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We do not use clear GIFs to collect personal information about you. However, we may use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a user to personalize user experience and for statistical analysis of user experiences on our web pages.
Know about them? You do now.
Should you be unable to log in or wish to have your account(s) deactivated, contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country as listed on our site at privacyadmin.ea.com, or if your country is not listed, by contacting the Privacy Policy Administrator in the United States. We will be happy to review, update or remove information as appropriate. We may still retain your information in our files however, to resolve disputes, enforce our user agreement, and due to technical and legal requirements and constraints related to the security, integrity and operation of our websites.
Some EA sites or services may collect personal information that is not accessible via our site. However, in such cases, you may be able to access that information through alternative means of access described by the service or by writing your local privacy policy administrator at privacyadmin.ea.com and you will be contacted within 30 days regarding your request.
If we've stolen from you, it's your fault and you'll have to contact us. Unless you're in California
XIV. California Residents: Your California Privacy Rights
Under California law, California Residents who have an established business relationship with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) or one of its subsidiaries may choose to opt out of EA disclosure of personal information about them to third parties for direct marketing purposes. As detailed above, our policy is not to disclose personal information collected online to a third party for direct marketing purposes without your approval.
I could rip into any EULA so it's not just EA, but the rights the EULA give you are far beyond what is necessary to run a big corporation - and by judicial "use" of the rights they have, they can pass everything to a third party company - which just went bankrupt. While they happily log everything you do while you have an EA program running, even if doesn't appear in Task Manager.
If you're not doing anything illegal, then you may say "Why should I be bothered?" - but how do you know you're not doing anything that "seems" illegal.
Perhaps you have a lot of pictures of your child with his friends on the beach? EA snoops and wonders why a grown man/woman has lots of pictures of semi-naked children on their computer.
Perhaps you mail box is filling up with viagra spam, EA may be wondering why you're dealing in so much viagra.
Perhaps you've left a bad Amazon comment on an EA product, EA would "politely" like to know "exactly" why you've chosen to "Amazon-bomb" their "brilliant" product, and will contact you to find out. Repeatedly. At 2am.
It's not that they will, it's that they can. And legally, they're allowed to, because you signed the EULA.
