Aestu wrote:
And why would universities part with that information? Again, they're not allowed to anyway. So the source was probably some sort of surreptitious monitoring.
You keep bringing this back to hacking. That's not what this is about. It's a question of what information should and should not be legitimately distributed.
I'm guessing universities parted with that information because the RIAA is searching for people that are stealing music (much like anyone would search for anyone who is stealing anything). The colleges are likely turning over information freely (because they can do what they want with their own network logs) or they're turning over identities via court issued subpoenas.
When asked why this was a big deal, you didn't say you were concerned about your non-identifying information being distributed; you said you were worried about Spam, the RIAA, EA monitoring 'literally everything' on your computer and Identity Theft. Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of theft, but Identity Theft has nothing to do with the legitimate acquisition and use of personal information. For that reason, hacking (one of the largest means of getting lots of identity information) is pretty relevant to this conversation.
If the question is about information distribution and what is fair-game then state your opinion. EA states in their Privacy Policy...
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III. What Is Personal Information And When Does EA Collect It?
...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.
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IV. What Is Non-Personal Information and When Does EA Collect It?
Non-personal information, alone, cannot be used to identify or contact you. EA collects non-personal information about your use of our online and mobile products and services both on our website and in the course of game play and software usage (on PC, mobile and game system platforms).
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country 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. There may be instances where we are legally required to retain your information.
A. What Types of Non-Personal Information Does EA Collect?
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.
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B. Will EA Share My Information With Third Parties?
EA will never share your personal information with third parties without your consent. We may, however, share anonymous, non-personal, aggregated and/or public information with third parties. There may be circumstances where you may share information on your own.
Those are key points in the Privacy Policy; the distinction between Personal and Non-personal information, and that EA isn't going to share your personal information with third parties. That means the most that EA is sharing is non-personal information about you and your computer - neither which can be used to identify you. That tells me EA isn't going to sell your information to the RIAA because you downloaded some songs from PirateBay. If you're upset about EA sharing your IP address (which is likely logged by most websites you visit), your ZipCode (which is easily harvested from cookies on your machines), or whatever OS and configuration you're using, then just don't use the software. Remember though, this shit is done by a lot of software and websites, so it's not like Evil EA is trying to sell you guys out.
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Just because you (think you) have nothing to hide does not mean it is ok for someone to waltz up and check everything out whenever they feel like it. Just like I don't need TSA grabbing my balls to get on a plane.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't like the idea of my information being sold or accessed against my will (just like I don't like the TSA) but I'm aware that this type of stuff is already happening. Non-personal information being collected and stored is pretty common-place. I'm not convinced that this is uncommon, malicious in intent, intended to sell anyone out or that EA even cares if you prefer OpenOffice to Microsoft Office.
