General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a law in Europe protecting privacy and promoting security on digital services. Services that collect personal data, such as the cookies that are presented when entering a website. The journal entry (Un)informed Consent: Studying GDPR Consent Notices in the Field, 3 experiments are concluded to show how people are interacting with the cookies and consent when entering a website. Some of the research that was collected suggested that websites will use certain designs for the consent so users will usually click accept. As said in the journal entry “Typical techniques include color highlighting of the button to accept privacy-unfriendly defaults, hiding advanced settings behind hard to see links, and pre-selecting checkboxes that activate data collection” (976). Basically distracting the user with these highlighting methods, and also making sure they do not see the deeper clues.
Read the terms..
We now move onto CASUAL SURVEILLANCE–WHY WE SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO CANDY CRUSH SAGA & OTHER CASUAL GAMES by Stephanie Vie. Vie goes into depth of explaining that games such as Candy Crush are constantly being tracked by companies. These companies, for example King.com, are tracking your every move. We often do not think twice about the fine print, especially when it comes to harmless phone games. But we are agreeing to terms, understandbly so. As individuals, we wouldn’t think any harm could come out of a silly little game. Which brings me to Vie’s next point in the darker side of phone games. Playdom Inc. was sued by U.S. Federal Trade Commission for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule. This was due to the fact they collected data from a vast majority of children under 13 years old without parental consent. Data as such is collected and it could be sold, stored, or even used against you in some way.
All this talk of games reminded me of when I was in my early teenage years and we were introduced to Talking Tom and Talking Angela. It was essentially an interactive cat that can have conversations and even back and forth banter. Many parents were worried about what was on the other side of these games. An article by Stuart Dredge called “What the Talking Angela app is really saying to your kids” mentions how many parents thought that this game was being run by a pedophilia ring but it was dismissed as a hoax. Dredge ends her article by explaining that parents should pay more attention to what their children are downloading. As adults we have the capability to read the terms and be more vigilant to our online presence.
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