RE: [GD-General] Collecting info from players

[Timur D. <ti...@cr...>]

Real privacy is not possible in our society, so everything must be =
measured in common sence.

First of all, such statistical data is probably not IP bound, there is =
no point for game company to know that Ip 192.123.111.32 have =
Pentium4/800
Its needed as purely statistics, how many users have Pentiums versus AMD =
how many users run server on Linux and how many on Widnows,whats =
percentage of user have ATI or Nvidia video card.
it cannot affect you directly, you will not be spammed with emails =
suggesting to upgrade AMD to Intel or whatever, and your IP will not =
even be recorded most probably,=20
at least there`s no big reason to do it.
What is privacy infrigment or not is dictated by law, and collecting =
credit card info will surelly be illegal.
There`s no really perfect line of whats can be collected and what is =
not, everything that legally can be collected, can be collected.
It`s a business dission of what to collect or not, one of the =
consideretion is how users will react to that.
Unlikely game sales will drop if users will know that game sends thier =
CPU info to server.
It is not requires by law to put a warning on collecting CPU info on the =
game box, so nobody will do it.



-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Fahey [mailto:cp...@ea...]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 1:46 PM
To: gam...@li...
Subject: Re: [GD-General] Collecting info from players


2003 July 11th
Friday

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>>> Gathering platform specific information is a so natural
>>> thing, especially for game development companies, they
>>> must know thier user platforms.
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First of all, why is data regarding the user's platform being=20
collected AFTER the user has purchased the application?

All scenarios involving such data being collected AFTER the
user has purchased the application can be avoided.  If the
application malfunctions, the user can be presented with an
opportunity to share specific, explicit pieces of information
with the vendor.

As far as being "a so natural thing", so is deception, theft,
and invasion of privacy.



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>>> OS type/cpu type etc... are all anonymous data this is not
>>> an email or your credit card.
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<Cut>