PUBG Mobilehas made some changes to its privacy policy in order to accommodate certain Indian rules and avoid beingbanned outright in the country. For the most part, these changes will only affect users in India, but they are worth taking a look at nonetheless.
China recently banned 59 apps with no warning, citing national security as the reason for doing so, and rumors have been afloat that India is considering taking a similar route. Thankfully,PUBG Mobilewas not on the list of banned games for China, but the PUBG Corporation is making some changes proactively to avoid being banned from India.
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There are five major changes to the privacy policy that were made in hopes ofavoiding a ban in India, and though two of these only affect Indian players, the other three give insight on howPUBG Mobilecollects and uses the player’s personal information.
The first clarification in the new privacy policy states that data gathered from Indian users is stored exclusively on servers located in India. This change is likely in direct response toIndian rules and regulationsabout data collection. Piggybacking off of that, the second change states that support and engineering teams around the world do not have access to this Indian user data, as only those located in India will be able to access it. This point also shows that those teams do have access to user data from other countries aside from India.
The third change isn’t specific to Indian players, but more clearly showswhat kind of information players give up by using the app. Specifically,PUBG Mobilestores the player’s open ID, IP address, application version, battery level, WiFi strength, available space, network type, OS version, platform, carrier, country code, series ID, Android ID, MAC and IDFV, registration time, login time, and the date and time of certain in-game actions and purchases. The fourth point further elaborates how this information is used by third parties, saying “Where we permit any third parties to collect and use your Personal Information, we shall take reasonable measures to ensure that the third parties do not further disclose the Personal Information.”
Finally,PUBGmobile deletes all user data within 7 to 30 days after the account is deleted, meaning that information is still stored for at least a week after deleting the app. Players that find themselves feeling uncomfortable sharing this much data should keep this in mind should theydecide to delete their account. On the other hand, these privacy rules are pretty transparent when compared to other games, as making them so was necessary to avoid getting the game banned in India and other countries.
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