Senator Al Franken of Minnesota issued an open letter to Oculus, questioning and raising concerns over way the Oculus plans to collects data from the users.
Franken wrote in the letter:
Oculus’ creation of an immersive virtual reality experience is an exciting development, but it remains important to understand the extent to which Oculus may be collecting Americans personal information, including sensitive location data, and sharing that information with third parties
This is a reference to the privacy policy of Oculus Rift that it collects location data of the user and shares it with 3rd party sources .
In the open letter the senator asked the CEO of Oculus that how the headset collects location data and movement of users, and how long the company keeps the data to itself before giving it to third parties access to it.
Recently we found that after installing the Oculus’ software a process called OVRServer_x64.exe runs in the background and send updates to Facebook, owner of the Oculus Rift. If you go in depth of the privacy policy and you’ll find many shady terms and conditions. One of them states that they will use info to send you advertisements and promotional material.
The company have not yet released any public statement to the senator but they have responded with an official statement over the concerns of the users:
We want to create the absolute best VR experience for people, and to do that, we need to understand how our products are being used and we’re thinking about privacy every step of the way.
The Oculus privacy policy was drafted so we could be very clear with the people who use our services about the ways we receive or collect information, and how we may use it.
What do you think of the privacy policy of the Oculus, have we missed anything. Be sure to tell us in the comments below.
