Kashmir Hill reports:
My mom and I play a lot of Words With Friends. We’ve been knocking words back and forth across state lines for years now thanks to Zynga, the gaming behemoth behind WWF and a host of other addictive games such as Farmville, Zynga Poker, and Zombie Smash. In August, when Zynga changed its privacy policy, I actually read it. It was explicit about the information Zynga might collect; it ranged from the player’s profile photo and email address to the websites they’ve visited and “the amount of time spent on particular pages.” At the end of the policy, it said that any player who wanted to see what Zynga knew about them could request their file by emailing [email protected]. Companies in Europe are required by law to do this; it’s how Austrian law student Max Schrems got Facebook to send him the 880-page dossier the company had on him. But it’s a special treat for Americans. I wondered what would be in our Zynga dossiers, so my mom and I both requested our files.
Read more on Forbes.