Game-of-telephone privacy policy

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A game-of-telephone is a children's game that originates from China; where a starting message is passed through to multiple people. Then once the final message has been passed it's compared against the original one from how much it deviated from the starting message that was given.

How it works

When a consumer reviews a privacy policy, this privacy policy is supposed to inform the consumer what data will be collected, and how the data will be used. A game-of-telephone privacy policy constitutes a situation whereby a consumer's agreement with an app developer may be different between the app developer's agreement with a third party. For instance:

Third party says that data collected using their software development kit (SDK) can be used to determine insurance rates by insurance providers.
Third party licenses SDK to app developer who agrees to these terms.
App developer says to app user that application collects location data just to provide me in-app services & that it may be shared with third parties.
App developer never discloses to app user that collected data will be used to determine app user's insurance rates.
App developer does not meaningfully disclose relationship with third party in their terms of service.

Why it is a problem

Privacy

A privacy policy is meant to be transparent and direct; leaving loopholes for misguided interpretation or get out clauses of an otherwise directly stated policy is dangerous and misleading to many consumers that would have likely avoided the service if it was known. Profiling can cause issues of getting a fair rate when applying for certain medical or auto insurance rates based on what that specific firm/company has on the individual applying.

Transparency

Services that say they do not sell your data may use third parties that do (indirectly profiting as a result).^[1]

Examples

An excellent example of this would be the relationship between Arity (a business that sells data-collection SDKs), the mobile apps that use Arity SDKs, and the user of those mobile apps, mentioned in the Allstate Arity driver data theft case.^{[citation needed]}

References

↑ Ng, Alfred (2 Sep 2021). "What Does It Actually Mean When a Company Says, "We Do Not Sell Your Data"?". The Markup. Archived from the original on 14 Jun 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2026.

[1] Ng, Alfred (2 Sep 2021). "What Does It Actually Mean When a Company Says, "We Do Not Sell Your Data"?". The Markup. Archived from the original on 14 Jun 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2026.

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