PSA: The Privacy Policy has a significant error

[Craig42]

The Privacy Policy on this site states the following:

Your profile information is visible to other players, as well as your gaming history on the website. So, since anyone can create an account on the site, it should be considered public information. But if you use a pseudonym for your username, it would help to keep your real identity private (in case you would be worried about that).

This is highly misleading. I expect anyone reading that would think that "players" means the other players on this site. That's certainly what I thought. Instead, profile information is visible to everyone in the entire world, even to search engine bots. Billions of people is different to a few thousand. Being available by search engine is very different to being available when a URL is clicked on directly.

The remark that information can be seen "since anyone can create an account" just goes to reinforce the incorrect statement in the previous sentence. Profile information can be seen by anyone on the internet, whether they create an account on here or not. Creating an account is completely irrelevant.

Amazingly, when I pointed this out by email, I was told that "players" means "any BGA visitors, registered or not". This is an amazing definition, which I can't imagine would pass any legal challenge. (Any lawyers on here care to comment?) Google's web scraper bot is clearly *not* a player, registered or otherwise and a robots.txt file is hardly a new concept.

As those responsible think this is all fine as it is, I wanted to let you all know so that you don't add anything to your profile that you didn't intend to be available in a google search.

[Meeplelowda]

The Privacy Policy on this site states the following:

Your profile information is visible to other players, as well as your gaming history on the website. So, since anyone can create an account on the site, it should be considered public information. But if you use a pseudonym for your username, it would help to keep your real identity private (in case you would be worried about that).

This is highly misleading. I expect anyone reading that would think that "players" means the other players on this site. That's certainly what I thought. Instead, profile information is visible to everyone in the entire world, even to search engine bots. Billions of people is different to a few thousand. Being available by search engine is very different to being available when a URL is clicked on directly.

The remark that information can be seen "since anyone can create an account" just goes to reinforce the incorrect statement in the previous sentence. Profile information can be seen by anyone on the internet, whether they create an account on here or not. Creating an account is completely irrelevant.

Amazingly, when I pointed this out by email, I was told that "players" means "any BGA visitors, registered or not". This is an amazing definition, which I can't imagine would pass any legal challenge. (Any lawyers on here care to comment?) Google's web scraper bot is clearly *not* a player, registered or otherwise and a robots.txt file is hardly a new concept.

As those responsible think this is all fine as it is, I wanted to let you all know so that you don't add anything to your profile that you didn't intend to be available in a google search.

If "player" were explicitly defined that way in the Privacy Policy, then that's what it would mean. But absent an explicit definition, the plain meaning of the term would apply. I agree that it is not a reasonable expectation that "player" means "all visitors," including bots.

This is not the only privacy concern that has been raised on this forum.

[helpfulturn]

This is a huge privacy policy breach. I had no idea that not only boardgamearena members can find you, but also the general public and scrapers. The game history, showing the exact time and durations someone played a game is too much info. The ability to provide the city, age, and additional info in the profile is dangerous and misleading.

Vote here to call attention to it: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=17208

[Ryusan]

As usual, the mods and websites devs lack any legal understanding.... (see my posts about their terribly written moderation policy)

[Meeplelowda]

As usual, the mods and websites devs lack any legal understanding.... (see my posts about their terribly written moderation policy)

Perhaps they are aware of the legal implications and simply don't care. In the absence of any comment directly from them and without the ability to read their minds, we are just speculating about their motivations.