The CEO of Oculus Rift Brendan Iribe received a letter from Sen. Al Franken (the Senator for Minnesota) on Thursday, stating his concern over the privacy policy for Oculus Rift's VR headset, which means it is not just the gamers who are worried over this. Since VR is new in market, its user privacy poses a lot of questions along with it.
According to market researcher Strategy Analytics, the company's VR headsets alone are going to bring in $895 million this year. For devices connected to the Internet, it is common to collect user information. This causes a kind of threat to user privacy because there are chances that companies exchange user data with marketers, who use it to show their ads for specific audiences.
Sen. Al Franken's concerns came from all kinds of information that Rift collects. It includes movement and location data which it might share with Facebook (Oculus's parent company) or other groups. Editor of UploadVR Will Mason brought the privacy problem to Franken's attention, after posting about it on April 1.
Oculus normally collects information given by the consumers themselves. In addition to it, Oculus automatically collects consumer information when they use its services, as stated by Franken's letter. His letter also states that it is possible to share consumers' physical movements' information and location data within the family of related companies that Oculus is a part of.
The privacy statement also states that Oculus might share aggregated or de-identified data with others if required. It may also be shared with third parties in order to market products to consumers, on or off Oculus' platform. When this is done correctly, definitely the process of collection, storage, and sharing of personal information can improve consumers' VR experience, at the same time ensuring the protection of their sensitive information.