How Much VR User Data Is Oculus Giving To Facebook? (theverge.com) 60
Facebook owns many other apps and services, including the Oculus virtual-reality platform, which collects incredibly detailed information about where users are looking and how they're moving. Since most of the discussion about how Facebook handles user information is focused on the social network itself, The Verge's Adi Robertson looks into the link between Facebook and Oculus: A VR platform like Oculus offers lots of data points that could be turned into a detailed user profile. Facebook already records a "heatmap" of viewer data for 360-degree videos, for instance, flagging which parts of a video people find most interesting. If it decided to track VR users at a more detailed level, it could do something like track overall movement patterns with hand controllers, then guess whether someone is sick or tired on a particular day. Oculus imagines people using its headsets the way they use phones and computers today, which would let it track all kinds of private communications. The Oculus privacy policy has a blanket clause that lets it share and receive information from Facebook and Facebook-owned services. So far, the company claims that it exercises this option in very limited ways, and none of them involve giving data to Facebook advertisers. "Oculus does not share people's data with Facebook for third-party advertising," a spokesperson tells The Verge.
Oculus says there are some types of data it either doesn't share or doesn't retain at all. The platform collects physical information like height to calibrate VR experiences, but apparently, it doesn't share any of it with Facebook. It stores posts that are made on the Oculus forums, but not voice communications between users in VR, although it may retain records of connections between them. The company also offers a few examples of when it would share data with Facebook or vice versa. Most obviously, if you're using a Facebook-created VR app like Spaces, Facebook gets information about what you're doing there, much in the same way that any third-party app developer would. You can optionally link your Facebook account to your Oculus ID, in which case, Oculus will use your Facebook interests to suggest specific apps or games. If you've linked the accounts, any friend you add on Facebook will also become your friend on Oculus, if they're on the platform. Oculus does, however, share data between the two services to fight certain kinds of banned activity. "If we find someone using their account to send spam on one service, we can disable all of their accounts," an Oculus spokesperson says. "Similarly, if there's 'strange activity' on a specific Oculus account, they can share the IP address it's coming from with Facebook," writes Robertson. "The biggest problem is that there's nothing stopping Facebook and Oculus from choosing to share more data in the future."
Oculus says there are some types of data it either doesn't share or doesn't retain at all. The platform collects physical information like height to calibrate VR experiences, but apparently, it doesn't share any of it with Facebook. It stores posts that are made on the Oculus forums, but not voice communications between users in VR, although it may retain records of connections between them. The company also offers a few examples of when it would share data with Facebook or vice versa. Most obviously, if you're using a Facebook-created VR app like Spaces, Facebook gets information about what you're doing there, much in the same way that any third-party app developer would. You can optionally link your Facebook account to your Oculus ID, in which case, Oculus will use your Facebook interests to suggest specific apps or games. If you've linked the accounts, any friend you add on Facebook will also become your friend on Oculus, if they're on the platform. Oculus does, however, share data between the two services to fight certain kinds of banned activity. "If we find someone using their account to send spam on one service, we can disable all of their accounts," an Oculus spokesperson says. "Similarly, if there's 'strange activity' on a specific Oculus account, they can share the IP address it's coming from with Facebook," writes Robertson. "The biggest problem is that there's nothing stopping Facebook and Oculus from choosing to share more data in the future."
I am using HTC Vive (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was making the purchasing decision I looked at both from HTC and from Oculus. I chose HTC because it isn't owned by Facebook
Looks like I did make a wise choice
Re: I am using HTC Vive (Score:2, Insightful)
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Leaking data like this to China is bad in the sense of geopolitical strategy, but leaking it to FaceBook is a clear and present danger to the users themselves. Given the way Facebook is being shown to abuse their data collection for any number of shady practices it makes more sense for the individual user to avoid the Facebook collection.
What are the Chinese going to do with your VR porn records? Maybe they could get lucky and find some bad behavior on someone important enough to blackmail, but your avera
Really trying hard now (Score:3)
Re:Really trying hard now (Score:5, Informative)
The best privacy policy is the one where no data is collected other than what is strictly required to run the service the data is collected from. And if they do like to collect and aggregate anonymous data “to improve the service”, at least stick to the 3 Os: Open (transparency about what is collected and how it is used), Optional, and Off-by-default. A VR headset has no business collecting any of this crap without explicit consent.
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Re: Really trying hard now (Score:1)
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A VR headset has no business collecting any of this crap without explicit consent.
Ok for the "without explicit consent" part but, a lot of valuable can be collected from VR headsets in order to improve VR.
Tracking movement patterns in order to know if you are sick could be very useful. Motion sickness is a major problem for VR. There are mitigations but they tend to impact gameplay. This is something that depends a lot on the individual and more data for research purposes is a good thing.
And there are more technical aspects: people have different setups and positional tracking data may h
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The thing is, if you "collect the data to improve the VR" what happens to the data after you've used it to improve the VR? How much do you trust the company that scarfed up your data? Why?
In the case of Facebook, my answer is pretty much "I don't trust them at all.", and I'd be dubious about their promises even if I thought they could legally be held to them.
In the case of Occulus, they're owned by Facebook. They'll do what Facebook tells them to do.
And with respect to TOS, more than once I've read a TOS
Eye Tracking Analytics (Score:5, Interesting)
There's at least one VR experience that records heatmaps of what parts of the environment you look at and for how long, and sends those to the developer (although they're upfront about this, for the app I know of). Soon, VR headsets will have eye-tracking tech built in that tracks not just what is visible in your entire field of view, or even the center of this field of view, but what your eyes are pointing at. There are various benefits to this tech, but also latent worry that it can be abused for marketing reasons. Marketers have already used eye-tracking with normal 2d screens to tell what parts of their advertisements that viewers look at, or to find out how many notice product placement. It gets worse when you consider that marketers (or anyone else who you might not want passing judgement on you) find out what your gaze tends to linger on, and assume that means you like/want that thing. Who wants to get marked as gay in a database because their female friend played a VR game with your headset/PC, and was staring at the guys in it? Or worse, if you ARE gay but still in the closet. Word seems to be that VR eye tracking will remain confidential information for reasons like this, but it'll be difficult to control in VR social apps where gaze is sent over the internet to be seen by others (since the possibility of eye contact is arguably a benefit of the tech).
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There's at least one VR experience that records heatmaps of what parts of the environment you look at and for how long, and sends those to the developer (although they're upfront about this, for the app I know of).
I tend to look at women's posteriors, not their breasts.
I'm hoping this technology can confirm this inclination in other males, and influence the R&D budgets of women's underwear manufacturers.
That doesn't work (Score:2)
if you ARE gay but still in the closet. Word seems to be that VR eye tracking will remain confidential information for reasons like this, but it'll be difficult to control in VR social apps where gaze is sent over the internet to be seen by others (since the possibility of eye contact is arguably a benefit of the tech).
I was working for a company that did eye tracking computer input for disabled persons when this question came up: is it possible to tell if a person is gay by analyzing their eye movements?
The theory was that the pupil dilates when a man views a naked woman, would the same happen when a gay man views a naked man?
A literature search turned up an experiment (that I can't find at the moment) where this theory was tested on prison inmates who were definitively categorized as gay or straight based on their behav
How much? All of it... (Score:1)
Same with Whatsapp and everything else they own.
The question may as well be rhetorical.
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Same with Whatsapp and everything else they own.
The question may as well be rhetorical.
Exactly.
And there are ZERO fucks given for the idiot Facebook users suddenly crying about privacy and yet continue to use their services.
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Same with Whatsapp and everything else they own.
The question may as well be rhetorical.
Exactly.
And there are ZERO fucks given for the idiot Facebook users suddenly crying about privacy and yet continue to use their services.
Yeah - throw that expensive headset in the bin now that Facebook bought the company!
This is going to go waaaay beyond a single social network that you personally can avoid, it's gonna need regulating. We're gonna have to start thinking about personal data in a different way than we currently do, as property almost. It's not even clear that you can avoid it by not using the site, if enough of your friends are on there, plus photos they've uploaded plus facial recognition plus graph analysis, you can still be
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Precisely. Facebook is Oculus' patent entity, therefore not considered a third party. Every other data-grubbing place that facebook shares data with are third parties.
I still think Zuckerberg knew the "users are the product" social media business model, at least the free-wheeling ere of it, was doomed and that's why he diversified into VR. I don't think he's enough of a visionary to see VR as a next step in social media.
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* Parent entity, not patent.
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
All of it.
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Re: Simple (Score:2)
apparently there are still some naive people out there who really do think
They only think they're doing that.
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all of it - and anything else they can get their hands on.
If they're not keeping copies of all the video yet, you can bet they will do in a future model or software update. They'll then be using that video to capture any last detail they can about you, down the type of paint you have on the walls.
All of it (Score:2)
Duh.
Next question?
All of it! (Score:2)
Why not, when the users are the merchandise?
Mind Reading and Thought Control (Score:2)
Given Facebook's horrible track record when it comes to privacy, surveillance, and the public good, we should all be very alarmed by the prospect of an unregulated Facebook with VR technology penetrating our homes. They already have a team of psychologists, behavior experts, and academics helping to refine their products to be as addictive and lucrative as possible. What happens when they start getting unfettered access to our biodata? We betray our thoughts and feelings with a variety of subconscious or se
If you lay down with dogs... (Score:2)
Fakebook (Score:2)
Great... (Score:2)