ELECTRONIC ARTS PRIVACY POLICY

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One of my main amusements in life is to read contractual and privacy policies just to see how badly they are screwing you over.

Electronic Arts is producing a game called Star Wars The Old Republic, Due out Dec 20 of this year. And this is their privacy policy.

I warn you, this is bad.


When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or game system, we may collect certain non-personal demographic information including gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, game system, media, mobile device, including device IDs, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as username, user ID or persona, feature usage, game play statistics, scores and achievements, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles such as friends lists or purchases, for instance. We may also receive either non-personal or public information from third parties in connection with market and demographic studies and/or data that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.




The MAC address (Media Access Control Address) is unique to your computer. So , they're listing personal information as non personal to begin with. And the list of items "includes" (ie: they may invent more) all the big ones they use to sell to advertisers to make a buck off of you.


We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by excluding our current users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.


Thanks for admitting up front you're making any advertising buck you can off of us.



EA’s websites, online or mobile products or services may employ third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track. Some third-party dynamic in-game advertisement serving technology enable advertising to be temporarily uploaded into your web browser or mobile device and replaced while you are online


Remember how you now have to pay for your bandwidth , and if you go over a certain amount they charge you extra ?

Yeah. EA reserves the right to rack up your bandwidth all they want for advertising purposes. They deliver ads and you pay to receive them. And we're talking multi-megabyte flash animations , not just little side notes here. Full video and all. Nice.


EA uses your information to fulfill your specific requests, purchase orders and to send you purchase confirmation and other account-related information. In addition, the personal information you provide will allow us to send you messages about things including new products, features, enhancements, special offers, upgrade opportunities, contests and events of interest. You may also later opt out of certain of these communications.

Translation : We mercilessly spam you for all we're worth to try and make a buck off of you.


Otherwise, EA uses personal and non-personal information, both individually and combined together, to better understand the behavior and preferences of our customers, to troubleshoot technical problems, to serve static and dynamic advertising, to enforce our Terms of Service, to ensure proper functioning of our products and services as well as to help improve them. In addition, we combine non-personal information with personal information, such as an email address, to administer loyalty programs, tailor our offerings, web pages or game play experience to you.


Targetted advertising. Catch you when you're weak , get you to buy something that's utter junk because they know you're into , say , star wars memorabelia. So they sell you a cool doll, or map , or book , and it's junk and falls apart a weak after you get it , and sorry no refunds thanks for the cash.


By playing an EA game through a social network or other third party platform or service or by connecting to such a third party network, platform or service via one of our products and/or services, you are authorizing EA to collect, store, and use in accordance with this Privacy Policy any and all information that you agreed the social network or other third party platform could provide to EA through the social network/third party platform Application Programming Interface (API) based on your settings on the third party social network or platform. Your agreement takes place when you connect with the third party network, platform or service via our products and/or services, and/or when you connect with, “accept” or “allow” (or similar terms) one of our applications through a social network, or other third party platform or service.
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EA will never share your personal information with third parties without your consent.


I love this combination. I see it everywhere.

They will never share your personal information without your consent. But by the way , by playing the game / using their product ? You consent to them doing this.


It goes on , and on , and on. But in the end the message of these terms is crystal clear.

They take whatever info they can. They use it however they like (usually to make a buck in advertising) and if you don't like it , get off the internet entirely because everyone else has the same terms and conditions.

Next time tells you "it's all spelled out in our terms and conditions" , you don't have to read them. You just have to remember "We do what we like and screw you buddy". It's much shorter and just as accurate.