Kongregate's "privacy" of its users page 2

Originally posted by Fricknmaniac:

The problem is that they’re tracking your actions online and there’s a lot of money to be made in that field. The catch is that combining different sources of this information, they can tell exactly who you are and what you do. Even if your name isn’t on the internet bill for your house, it doesn’t take a genius that the 18 year old kid in the household might be the one going to Kongregate. This information isn’t intended to be used in any malicious ways, it’s just bought by corporations and used for marketing purposes. That’s why you’re seeing so much user-end anti-tracking software, because it’s not in the interest of websites to respect your privacy.

I doubt your ISP knows there’s an 18 year old in the house if they’re not the billpayer, and random advertising on sites definitely doesn’t know that. Whatever is tracked about you is not personally identifiable – if you looked at all the info a tracking cookie was storing, you wouldn’t be able to say “oh that’s Fricknmaniac”.

How targetted advertising works is by narrowing down the demographic you’re in,so that banner ads can show you stuff you might actualyl be interested it. Are you browsing justin Bieber fansites ever day? Then you might like to see an ad for a lifesize Justin Bieber figure, or a CD he’s signed himself. Aer you a metal fan ? then you probably don’t want the Bieber merchandise.

THe cookie is stored on your PC and you can delete it any time you like. It doesn’t send information back to a sever to be saved about you, because cookies can’t do that. And it can only be written to, or read from, sites using that ad network, because cookies aren’t crossdomain.

As far as privacy goes, this isn’t really that intrusive. Compare it with what real world companies do, without even telling you, and you might think the privacy concerns are in the wrong place. Shops like Walmart track every single transaction you make, unless you pay in cash. Even if you don’t have a loyalty card. and that is linked to your name, age, address, etc, because they have all that information about you. And you can’t just delete the information when you feel like it when you can with a cookie.

there’s something wrong when people are happy for stores to know everything about them and store the information themselves, but panic over cookies storing demographic information that you can delete at any point. I think what’s wrong is that the marketing techniques by antivirus makers were very effective.

I doubt your ISP knows there’s an 18 year old in the house if they’re not the billpayer, and random advertising on sites definitely doesn’t know that. Whatever is tracked about you is not personally identifiable – if you looked at all the info a tracking cookie was storing, you wouldn’t be able to say “oh that’s Fricknmaniac”.

They don’t even have to personally identify you to invade your privacy. It’s good enough to know that someone or anyone is using that specific PC/smartphone. Let’s say you have an embarrasing medical condition and visit sites related to it. Suddenly, you have ads about it shown to you whenever you browse. Someone else can use your PC and make the connection why those ads are showing up for them.

You know about How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did? They had a name linked to the account, but suppose it was a household account or a personal one with User X. It could’ve been similar depending on who’s in the family.

THe cookie is stored on your PC and you can delete it any time you like. It doesn’t send information back to a sever to be saved about you, because cookies can’t do that. And it can only be written to, or read from, sites using the ad network, because cookies aren’t crossdomain.

If you’re worred about cookies, you probably already block them, so them being easy to delete doesn’t matter. If you’re not worried about them, then you probably don’t care about deleting them.

It’s an additional way to track you instead of just through an IP. Cookies only need a unique ID for tracking. Like you kind of said, cookies can be read across domains, and that’s good enough to gather which sites you visited that use that ad network. There are also Flash cookies that are cross-domain.

there’s something wrong when people are happy for stores to know everything about them and store the information themselves, but panic over cookies storing demographic information that you can delete at any point.

I doubt there are many who are both thrilled about stores collecting their info and worried about cookies.

Sure, there are many times I don’t care about being tracked. But why take the chance there will be a time when I do care when it’s so easy to block them?

This thread was originally about trackers, but I’d also be worried about Kongregate’s privacy policy since they’re actually a store and do have your personal info when you buy something and can share it.

Unfortunately, Noscript does not prevent them all, especially on a gaming site mainly – so far – devoted to flash. Noscript cannot eradicate trackers & co. embedded in flash (those are not js).
And kongregate cannot check & test every possible embedded tracker/cross-site request.
If you really care about tracking & co., RequestPolicy (alongside Noscript) is the answer, but you need to get used to it – it’s not easy for some users.

Originally posted by Dever:

Under Account Settings:

We respect your privacy and will never share it with third parties.

Kongregate does make exceptions, so this isn’t true.

Just to clarify: that phrase is under the “email settings” tab and is immediately under the place where users may choose to enter their email if they want notifications and/or a weekly newsletter. In context, the “it” means “your email address.” We don’t share email addresses with anyone, so the statement stands as written.

Ah, I just saw that’s it’s under “email preferences”, but it’s also under “edit profile”. So, email addresses aren’t even shared with law enforcement or under a court order? :p

The profile info is public, so it’s one of the things Kongregate is allowed to share. I assume that info can also be shared even when the privacy options are enabled. The privacy policy only refers to user visibility.

Unless we tell you first (such as at the time we collect information from you), or unless it is part of a specific program or feature in which you have elected to participate, we do not share personally identifiable information that we have collected (such as name or email address) with other, third-party companies for their own commercial or marketing purposes.

There are still exceptions in any case. Even though you may not be sharing email addresses now, the privacy policy still says you can. And “for their own commercial or marketing purposes” doesn’t exclude sharing the info for their other purposes (whatever they may be).

I’m quite sure court orders are different.

Originally posted by ifdevurandom:

Unfortunately, Noscript does not prevent them all, especially on a gaming site mainly – so far – devoted to flash. Noscript cannot eradicate trackers & co. embedded in flash (those are not js).
And kongregate cannot check & test every possible embedded tracker/cross-site request.
If you really care about tracking & co., RequestPolicy (alongside Noscript) is the answer, but you need to get used to it – it’s not easy for some users.

Oooh, I like RequestPolicy so far. Certainly does seem like it will take some getting used to, though NoScript did too, so if I did it once, I can do it again, but at least I’ll finally be rid of those damn files from oolaya and mochibot that show up all the time in Flash Player Settings Manager.