A letter addressed to Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe was posted to Franken’s website on Wednesday, which lays out six questions for Iribe on behalf of Oculus VR. In addition, Global Positioning System tracking in online-service privacy statements isn’t exactly new, though that’s usually because the service or device in question offers useful services once we give it permission to stalk us.
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The senator’s interest in matters of privacy and data mining with Oculus Rift represents the most high-profile interrogation of the company’s policy, which has recently been flagged by other outlets.
“I appreciate that Oculus’ privacy policy provides detailed information about what data are collected, when they are collected, and with which companies they are being shared”, the Senator adds. The more we know about how companies like Oculus and HTC are using-and more importantly, plan to use-our information when we strap on their headset for an activity as innocuous as playing a game, the more informed we can be as consumers, and the more open and honest developers and manufacturers will have to be in turn.
Oculus already responded to these concerns, explaining that they were now using gathered data to improve the VR device.
The controversy surrounding the Oculus Rift has now gotten Minnesota Senator Al Franken involved. In good news, at least, those movements aren’t being captured as photographic images, as the Oculus Rift “Constellation” sensor only tracks infrared lights.
Also whem a user posts, shares or communicates with other Oculus, those will also be stored.
“Does Oculus share this information with third parties, including “related companies” for any other goal than the provision of services?”
It’s not clear why Oculus needs data on movement. He also wants to know how third parties handle the information as well.
“The PC and Console powered virtual reality market is entering the classic chicken and egg phase whereby the major games publishers are waiting on the side-lines until there are enough VR headsets and users in the market for it to make financial sense for them to build a VR library of content”, said Watkins.
“When done properly, the collection, storage, and sharing of personal information may enhance consumers’ virtual reality experience, but we must ensure that Americans’ very sensitive information is protected”, Sen.
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Franken seems to take issue, though, is the location information that Oculus collects from the device’s IP address. We don’t have advertising yet and Facebook is not using Oculus data for advertising – these are things we may consider in the future. The one complaint we’d levy specifically at Oculus is that its privacy and legal policy pages weren’t set in stone until February-a full month after the headset’s preorder campaign began in earnest-so we certainly understand why some customers would have preferred having that information before making a purchase decision.
