I wanted to wait 30 minutes for a response of B-dubs on if it is guaranteed that nothing will change in the future. Nothing in my post includes wrong information. I am quite frankly baffled that that is given as the reason. I took Resetera's Privacy Policy and held that against the privacy policy of the company under which the majority of the community sites of M.O.B.A Network AB fall.
I'm just going to post it here, because again I did NOT post any wrong information. I just state the differences in privacy policies, with a big asterisk on the one of Magic Find which basically states another privacy policy supersedes the partnered sites policy. I put a lot of hours into this post so again here it is:
Opening statement
This post is purely for informational purposes. Considering the values this community has been built upon and how important your personal data is in those values, it seemed important to me to look into the company that has bought this forum. Do note that this post is
NOT made to discuss any moderation decisions on other partner sites, and/or other topics not relating to your user data. Again this post is made to inform you what will happen under the new umbrella, and give you options to protect your data.
I kindly ask you all to not derail this thread with other topics. These topics can be discussed in Cerium's thread about the new ownership
here.
1. Introduction
Ever since Cerium made his thread announcing the sale of Resetera LLC to M.O.B.A Network AB one of the more important questions that came up was how the new company will handle our user data. The current privacy policy under Era Network LLC, which operates Resetera.com, can be found
here and will be used as a baseline to compare it to the policy's of the new owners. Under the new owners most of their community sites seem to fall under the umbrella of
Magic Find Inc. Which is where you are linked to once you click on their individual privacy policy links in the footer of these sites.
2. The good news
Going over the
privacy policy of Magic Find and you'll notice broadly the same policy applies as it is now under Era Network LLC. Though a big asterisk applies here which will be discussed in the next paragraph. For now this means the following:
- Any information you provide is collected (this includes but is not limited to; email address, personal identifying information, messages shared through use of this forum)
- Information that is automatically collected (this includes but is not limited to your IP address, pages you visit, browser type, software type, etc.)
- User generated content (any content you submit to this forum can be used, replicated, prepare derivative works, royalty free, and for commercial use)
- Company does not sell, lease, or otherwise transfer your information to third-parties for profit.*
These points are already disclosed under the old ownership and remain the same under the new ownership, no surprises here. The following points are not disclosed under Era Network LLC's privacy policy. These can be considered as additional and include:
- Geo-location
- Third party provided information (this is seemingly included because they have the option to like you Battle.net, Facebook, etc. accounts)
So for the most part there are no big surprises here. Most of it aligns with is already in place on Resetera, also including the use of Cookies. However there isn't an asterisk for nothing on the fourth point which will now be discussed.
3. The catch
Going over Magic Find's privacy policy one of the things that stands out is under point six "advertising". It states the following:
Now for the most part this goes over the way Cookies are implemented. The big thing here is that CafeMedia's
privacy policy supersedes that of Magic Find. Now again, this mostly covers the way cookies are implemented. However there's a big catch here and that's the way they are partnered with certain other parties that do different stuff with you user data:
As you can see a lot of personal information is sold here for profit. Especially LiveRamp might concern some of you. Also the fact CafeMedia's privacy policy supersedes the privacy policy of the partnered site is questionable at best.
4. What options do you have to protect your data
Considering Resetera's application method, you are probably using a personal email address. This can be changed as has been stated by admins in the announcement thread:
Furthermore you still have an option to opt out of certain data collector through the use of
Network Advertising Intiative's cookie (ironic I know).
You can also opt-out individually at the designated partners mentioned under paragraph 3. once the forum has been completed integrated under new ownership.
Users from the EEA have the right to ask for their data, delete their data, etc. under the GDPR.
5. Closing statement
All in all, we all have options to protect our data. Beginning with changing your email if you are not comfortable with sharing that. Through the use of a technicality M.O.B.A Network AB can state they will not sell your data but it is clear that through the use of a loophole this can happen.
Hopefully this helps you with some of the questions you may have had regarding your personal data. Anymore questions or discussions regarding our user data can be posted below. Again please do not derail this thread with other topics relating to the sale.
