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p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- “Zynga (the company that develops Mafia Wars) does not give a rats a** after injecting a spyware cookie into the game,” p2pnet quoted i_hate_zyng as saying in a Reddit post.

“Upvote and let the others know how a company can screw up your security for personal monetary gains!” -  s/he recommended.

Then, “I am emailing you this and making a comment because you prolly wont use my email,” said Capo in a Reader’s Write. “I just want to say you have no right to spoil peoples fun wth this kind of story. If you don’t like Mafia fine. But lots of people do.”

My follow-up yesterday cited Capo and went on to highlight TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington as a self-confessed addict of another retarded Zynga ‘product,’ in this case ‘FishVille’.

Now  Phorm Phighter and soon-to-be-Virgin Media nemesis Alex Hanff has added another element which could catapult Zynga to a much higher level, and one it would definitely rather avoid.

In a comment post, “I am currently in discussions with Facebook’s Director of EU Public Policy on this issue,” he says, pointing to a post on his NoDPI site, which states >>>

It was recently brought to my attention that the popular game Mafia Wars which is found on Facebook and various other Social Networking sites has recently made changes requiring users to enable 3rd Party Cookies.  There is some concern over this and already it has been reported that they are doing this to enable them to save tracking cookies onto a users computer:

http://p2pnet.multibox.be/story/32170

Under new EU Regulations voted in last month, consent is required before placing non essential cookies on the computers of all person living within the EU – which we have reported on extensively on this blog.

It is of great concern that companies seems to be ignoring these new requirements and are pressing ahead with the use of 3rd party tracking cookies.  These concerns are exacerbated when one realises that 3rd party apps on Facebook are -not- required to adhere to Facebook’s Privacy Policy and therefore users who feel their personal information may be covered under Facebook’s Privacy Policy are in fact being mislead.

We would like to hear from anyone who plays 3rd party games on Social Networks as to whether or not these games require 3rd Party Cookies to be enabled in order for users to play them.  Given the amount of time people invest into these games it is important we establish which ones are a danger to user privacy.

Please get in touch via the comments to this blog entry and let us know which games are requiring 3rd Party Cookies.

[UPDATE]

I am currently in discussions with Richard Allan, Director of EU Public Policy for Facebook regarding these issues.  I asked him:

My understanding (from a recent conference in Brussels) is that 3rd Party Apps on Facebook are not even required to adhere to Facebook’s Privacy Policy – so obviously this is a serious concern from our perspective and I personally feel many users mistakingly believe that if it is on Facebook it is covered by Facebook’s terms which is clearly not the case.

Given the Telecoms Reform Package being passed in the EU last month, we will soon see changes to legislation which require explicit prior informed consent before dropping or reading any non essential cookies/LSOs (Flash Cookies) on a users machine – how do Facebook intend to deal with enforcing this among their 100s of thousands of 3rd party app developers?

Richard assures me that a statement will be issued in due course.

Stay tuned.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

p2pnet – Zynga Mafia Wars spyware, December 5, 2009
self-confessed addict – Dear Capo: Got your Zynga Mafia email, December 6, 2009
Virgin Media nemesis – Campaign protests Virgin Media spyware, December 3, 2009
NoDPI – Facebook Games Tracking Users?, December 7, 2009

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