Abstract
The management of personal consumer information by corporate entities is a politically and socially sensitive subject. This paper examines how personal information is handled by mobile game developers and displayed inside mobile games. 38 mobile games from 29 developers were examined, chosen based on their popularity as expressed by the rankings in the Google Play store. An investigation was made into the type of information that is required during the registration process, what information is optional, and what information is finally displayed in the game and to whom. In a second step, the privacy policies of the 29 mobile game developers were compared, examining them for differences in content. Lastly, the reaction of game developers to written requests for information disclosure and deletion was investigated. Results suggest that how personal information is displayed in-game is largely dependent on the game genre. Privacy policies, while following the same template, differ in how detailed they are held. Lastly, replies to inquiries about information and requests for deletion varied greatly and sometimes were at odds with a company’s privacy policy. This investigation indicates the necessity of accumulating and sharing know-how and best practices for the design of privacy policies and the proper handling of personal information.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The games “Hay Day” and “Gardenscapes” are counted as “requiring the registration of a username”, as a name for your “farm” or “garden” is needed. However, the user name is thereafter not shown in-game. Interaction with other players is only possible via linking your game to a Facebook account.
References
European Commission: Special Eurobarometer 359: Attitudes on Data Protection and Electronic Identity in the European Union, Brussels (2011)
Acquisti, A., Grossklags, J.: Losses, gains, and hyperbolic discounting: an experimental approach to information security attitudes and behavior. In: 2nd Annual Workshop on “Economics and Information Security”, UC Berkeley (2003)
Acquisti, A., Grossklags, J.: Privacy and rationality in individual decision making. IEEE Secur. Priv. 3(1), 26–33 (2005)
Norberg, P.A., Horne, D.R., Horne, D.A.: The privacy paradox: personal information disclosure intentions versus behaviors. J. Consum. Aff. 14(1), 100–126 (2007)
Jenkins, A., Anandarajan, M., D’Ovidio, R.: ‘All that Glitters is not Gold’: the role of impression management in data breach notification. Western J. Commun. 78(3), 337–357 (2014)
Gatzlaff, K.M., McCullough, K.A.: The effect of data breaches on shareholder wealth. Risk Manage. Insur. Review 13(1), 61–83 (2010)
Manworren, N., Letwat, J., Daily, O.: Why You Should Care About the Target Data Breach. Bus. Horiz. 59(3), 257–266 (2016)
Föck, M., Fröschle, H.: Schutz der Unternehmensdaten: Data Leakage Protection (DLP). HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik 48(5), 28–34 (2011)
Newzoo: The Global Games Market Will Reach $108.9 Billion in 2017 With Mobile Taking 42%, https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/the-global-games-market-will-reach-108-9-billion-in-2017-with-mobile-taking-42/, last accessed 2017/07/28
Statista: Number of Mobile Phone Gamers in the United States From 2011 to 2020 (In Millions). https://www.statista.com/statistics/234635/number-of-mobile-gamers-forecast/. Accessed 29 July 2017
Statista: Average number of mobile games played daily and monthly in the United States as of April 2016. https://www.statista.com/statistics/596593/number-mobile-games-played/. Accessed 12 Oct 2017
National Institute of Standards and Technology: Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Gaithersburg (2010)
Zuboff, S.: Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. J. Inform. Technol. 30(1), 75–89 (2015)
WordsMobile Stuido: Privacy Policy, http://www.words-mobile.com/policy.htm. Accessed 15 July 2017
Electronic Arts Inc.: Privacy Policy. http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBPRIVACY/US/en/PC/. Accessed 15 July 2017
Square Enix: Privacy Policy. http://www.jp.square-enix.com/privacy/index2_en.html. Accessed 15 July 2017
Saroiu, S., Wolman, A., Agarwal, S.: Policy-carrying data: a privacy abstraction for attaching terms of service to mobile data. In: HotMobile 2015 Proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, pp. 129–134. ACM Press, New York (2015)
Mun, M., Hao, S., Mishra, N., Shilton, K., Burke, J., Estrin, D., Hansen, M., Govindan, R.: Personal data vaults: a locus of control for personal data streams. In: Co-NEXT 2010 Proceedings of the 6th International Conference, Article no. 17, pp. 1–12. ACM Press, New York (2010)
Yu, L., Zhang, T., Luo, X., Xue, L.: AutoPPG: towards automatic generation of privacy policy for android applications. In: SPSM 2015 Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM CCS Workshop on Security and Privacy in Smartphones and Mobile Devices, pp. 39–50. ACM Press, New York (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Brückner, S., Sato, Y., Kurabayashi, S., Waragai, I. (2018). The Handling of Personal Information in Mobile Games. In: Cheok, A., Inami, M., Romão, T. (eds) Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. ACE 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10714. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76270-8_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76270-8_29
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76269-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76270-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)