Who hasn’t heard of Candy Crush? Even if you’re not hooked yourself, you probably receive a stream of messages from your friends about the game. The company behind Candy Crush, King, is about to be floated on the stock market, and can justly claim to be the creator of one of the most addictive social games of recent times, with more than 500 million downloads.
However, most of the game’s millions of users accept –without reading– the terms and privacy policy and yet are unaware of what data they are making available to the application.
What personal data are you handing over to Candy Crush and how is it used?
When you accept the privacy policy of King’s popular game you agree to:
- Give personal information such as your name, email address, date of birth, gender…
- This data may not be passed to third parties or shared by the company unless requested by a competent authority or when the company considers it necessary to preserve the integrity of other users.
- If you disclose your personal information in any public areas of the application, Candy Crush is not responsible. Other users can download and use this data without your consent
Candy Crush and Facebook
One of the things that has helped Candy Crush go viral is its use of Facebook. Through this social network, users can invite friends to play in exchange for rewards such as new lives.
The flip side however is that Facebook users who don’t play, see their comments filling up with unwanted invites for the app, which generates a negative feeling towards the game.
When a player accesses Candy Crush through Facebook, they give certain permissions to the app. If you want to restrict access to your personal data, the following tips offer the solution in these three cases:
1. If you don’t play Candy Crush and you want to block invites: Go to Privacy Settings / Blocking / Block apps and enter the name ‘Candy Crush’.
2. You play but you don’t want your name to appear every time you enter: Go to account settings / Apps and once you’re in the game, go to the section “Visibility of apps”. Select “Only me” or if you like, the group of friends you want to be able to see you.
3. You no longer play Candy Crush and you want to remove it from your list: In our Facebook privacy guide we explain how to remove apps you no longer use from your Facebook profile.
What’s your situation?