You are going to want to read the terms of service for the Oculus Rift before buying one, if you care about your privacy.
Oculus' Terms of Service raises quite a few privacy concerns, as well as reveals that information that is collected from users will be sent back to Facebook.
Get ready for a case of the chills, because once the consumer installs Oculus Home, it is pretty much always on and collecting data about you. After the software is installed, Oculus has full permission to always be on in order to detect when the VR headset is turned on and then consequently launches the background service. However, what it is also doing is sending updates to and communicating with Facebook's servers.
If you take a close look at the Terms of Service, there is a section titled "Information Automatically Collected About You When You Use Our Services." It is in this section that the Facebook-owned company states that it collects various information from its users.
This includes "information about the games, content, or other apps installed on your device or provided through our Services, including from third parties," as well as the type of device used, the IP address, location information and information regarding the user's physical movements.
This data can be collected either through cookies, local storage, pixels or GPS of Wi-Fi technology, in the case of location services.
Further explained in a section about third parties collecting information, the Terms and Services reveals that it might share information about the user with their family of companies. Since Oculus is owned by Facebook, you can expect to see the company, as well as Instagram and WhatsApp, right at the top of this list.
However, for what exactly is your information being used? The privacy policy cites typical things like providing technical support, enabling user-to-user communications, learning from the way people use the service, etc. Then, things take another creepy turn when it states that Oculus will use the information collected to "send you promotional messages and content and otherwise market to you on and off our Services."
So, basically, Oculus is gathering user data that includes your body measurements and where you are, and then, can use this information in marketing campaigns directly for those users.
As much as the Terms of Service may make us a little paranoid, we kind of expected that data would be going back to Facebook once we learned the company acquired the VR service.
Just remember that, once you agree to the Oculus Rift's Terms of Service, you are allowing your information to go back to Facebook.
Source: Gizmodo
Photo: Adam Griffith | Flickr
