{"id":329,"date":"2014-05-09T13:54:39","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T17:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.domaincrunch.com\/?p=329"},"modified":"2016-05-10T16:56:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T16:56:40","slug":"facebook-and-zynga-playing-games-privacy-policies-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/facebook-and-zynga-playing-games-privacy-policies-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook and Zynga Playing Games? Privacy Policies Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 9, 2014 – Yesterday, the 9th<\/sup> Cir. Court of Appeals dismissed federal wiretap claims against Zynga and Facebook. At issue was whether the gaming giant and FB were improperly disclosing user information to advertisers.<\/p>\n

In the class action suit, FB users were understandably unhappy to discover that when they clicked on an ad or icon, FB sent a \u201creferrer header\u201d that included the user\u2019s Facebook ID and the address of the FB page the user was viewing when they clicked the link.Apparently, Zynga had specifically programed its games to collect the \u201creferrer information\u201d and then send the valuable information to third-parties.So what\u2019s the big deal about a \u201creferrer header\u201d being sent to third party advertisers and why does this matter to the domain and Internet community?<\/p>\n

For starters, FB and Zynga were not required to send or transmit \u201creferrer headers\u201d they could have easily omitted the \u201creferrer header\u201d and still completed the HTTP transactions. <\/p>\n

Additionally, the Plaintiffs are alleging that these disclosures also violated the FB Privacy Polices. It does not take much imagination to think of scenarios where you would not want your user info and site info sent to third-parties.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, for the consumers, the wiretap claims could not stand under the Federal statutes. Under the Stored Communications and the Wiretap Acts of the ECPA the information disclosed to advertisers did not qualify as the “contents of a communication.” The case turned on whether or not the \u201creferrer header\u201d (the FB User Identification and site address) were the \u201ccontents\u201d of the communication. Under ECPA, while prohibited from disclosing \u201ccontents,\u201d a provider is permitted to disclose \u201crecord information.\u201d The Court concluded that the user\u2019s Facebook ID and the address of the webpage from which the user\u2019s HTTP request to view another page was sent \u201cdoes not meet the definition of \u2018contents,\u2019 because these pieces of information are not the \u2018substance, purport, or meaning\u2019 of a communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while the Federal Wiretap claims are out, the Plaintiffs can pursue Facebook under claims that FB violated its own privacy policies and can also proceed with their state law claims. You can find a copy of the full decision I<\/span>n Re Zynga Privacy Litigation<\/span> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In sum, website owners need to be careful what information they collect from users and what they disclose to third-parties.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see soon, but I\u2019m betting that there\u2019s going to be a big fight over the language of those \u201cPrivacy Polices.\u201d Make sure your Privacy Polices are clear and updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 9, 2014 – Yesterday, the 9th Cir. Court of Appeals dismissed federal wiretap claims against Zynga and Facebook. At issue was whether the gaming giant and FB were improperly disclosing user information to advertisers. In the class action suit, FB users were understandably unhappy to discover that when they clicked on an ad or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nysck.com\/nysck-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}