Since its inception in the 1950s, video gaming has grown infinitely more popular, advanced, commercialised, and certainly more legally complicated.
By Karl Blom, partner, Prineil Padayachy, senior associate, and Danielle van der Watt, candidate attorney from Webber Wentzel
While games are typically subject to terms and conditions governing their access, gamers are often unaware of specific terms and simply scroll through and ‘accept’ so that they can access a game or platform.
While this may not seem important to the average gamer, what exactly are they agreeing to when they click “accept terms and conditions”?
What may gaming companies do with your personal information?
Gaming companies may process a plethora of personal information, including – names; dates of birth and ages; email and physical addresses; telephone numbers; credit card information; IP addresses; audiovisual information; demographic information; browser information; hardware and software information; and communications.
Whenever you interact with a game – whether by setting up your profile, sending messages in chats or publishing any content in the game – the gaming company is processing your information.
Navigating the gaming privacy minefield
By choosing to game, gamers are inevitably giving up some of their privacy rights and personal information to gaming companies. However, it is possible for gamers (or their parents) to control and limit how much they give up:
Read the terms and conditions.
- As daunting as it may be, it is important to know what you (or your child) are consenting to when gaming. Privacy Policies are especially important where personal information is concerned.
- Check if the company has a right to monitor communications, and how much of your information is kept and shared by the company. Understanding the game’s policy may not dissuade you from playing the game, but it may make you think twice before sharing your home address or identity number.
Use a separate email address for gaming purposes.
- Your email address is often the key to finding an abundance of your personal information. Avoid using your work or personal email address when signing up for gaming services.
Never use your real name as a username.
Avoid sharing identifiable pictures of yourself or using them as profile photos.
Avoid clicking URLs shared by other users.
- Clicking on links is the most common way to be baited into running an exploit, downloading malware, or falling for phishing.
Only give the game as much access as necessary.
Be wary of consenting too freely when a game requests access to your device’s microphone or camera.
- For example, though you may have to give the game access to your microphone for in-game communication, try to restrict that access as much as possible. Push to Talk (PTT) is safer than Always On/Continuous Transmission/Push to Mute (PTM), or Voice Activated (VOX) microphone mode options. Privacy settings can be changed manually in-game at any time.
Never share sensitive personal information – even if you think they can’t hear you.
- Many gaming companies make users consent to the monitoring and recording of all their communications – including their “private” chats with their close friends over what they believe to be closed channels.
Supervise and inform your gamer kids.
- If you are a parent of a child over 10 years old, it is probably difficult for you to supervise your child the whole time that they are gaming. It is important to have a conversation with them about what personal information they should never share, and what the risks are should they choose to share it. Take steps to ensure that your and your child’s privacy settings are as restrictive as possible. Here it’s important to ensure that your child is not misrepresenting their age when gaming. Many games have important protective measures and information processing limitations built into the game based on the user’s age. When your child misrepresents their age, those protective measures fall away and the risk of their personal information falling into the wrong hands increases significantly.
These are just some ways in which gamers can protect their personal information, or at least minimise the risk of having their personal information processed, stored or shared.
The responsibility lies with you to ensure that you understand and know how your personal information (and/or that of your child) will be used.