A new privacy policy issued by Walt Disney Internet Group allows the company's online services considerably more leeway in the collection and use of account information of its customers, including children. The Disney websites now promulgating the updated privacy policy include Disney.com, ABC.com, ESPN.com, Go.com and paid services such as ESPN Fantasy Games and Disney's Blast.
Disney acknowledged in an email to customers last week that changes from the previous privacy policy mean the services "may now share your information with carefully selected third parties whose products and services we think would interest you." But a comparison of the old and new policies also shows that Disney will now have the right to associate "Information Colleted Through Technology" with the personal information of its customers.
For example, the new policy says the Disney sites can "use a variety of technical methods for tracking purposes, including Web beacons ... The information from use of these technical methods may be collected in a form that is personally identifiable." Site visitation data gathered from tracking IP addresses may now be combined with personally identifiable information, whereas the old policy said it would normally not be. And Disney sites may have access to information from Web beacons and cookies used by third party advertisers on their sites and "this information may permit us to identify other sites that you have visited that are also associated with the network advertiser."
Things get even murkier when comparing the new privacy policy for children under 13 to the the old one. Disney characterizes the changes to its privacy policy for children as being unsubstantial, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They suggest children's information will not be shared with others, but then they detail the scenario of how it can be: "Before allowing a kid to use a feature of our Web sites that might result in the disclosure of the kid's information to third parties on the Internet, we require a parent's name and credit card information to confirm that the parent has given permission for the kid's participation in such features," the new privacy policy for kids says. "The credit card will be charged only if the parent is signing up for a subscription service and has authorized us to charge their credit card. Otherwise the credit card information is used for real-time verification purposes to confirm that an adult is authorizing the kid's participation."
Not only that, but anything youngsters let slip about themselves in chat sessions, instant messaging, interacting with pen-pals, or posting of message boards on Disney's Blast and other sites becomes fair game for combination with the same "Information Collected Through Technology" techniques as the adults are subject to. "In the course of a kid's participation in these features, a kid may also provide us additional information about himself or herself, such as the contents of his or her chat or message board postings," the new privacy reads. "If a parent allows us to collect personal information about their kid, we may link certain information collected through technology (see the "Information Collected Through Technology" section of A2 of our general Privacy Policy) to that personal information."
So if you are so foolish as to approve your child's use of any of these Disney sites, they basically have the right to link everything they know about you and your progeny - from your credit card to your child's opinion about "Brother Bear" -- in one database record. But why are they going to all this trouble? After all, this is not a casual re-writing of one website's legalese - it's a massive undertaking by a giant media conglomerate that you can now find on numerous major websites.
I don't think Disney's motive here is the right to spam their customers as much as it is making sure they can build their customer database. Each of their websites is a property that can be sold, and each customer record is an asset that increases the value of that property. So if little Johnny gets a little too chatty in his "Secret Friends" instant messaging in Disney's Toontown Online, it's all the merrier for Disney's accountants. And, unfortunately, Disney is only one of a number of giant multinationals that sees your personal information as part of its corporate assets.
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