Gaming Apps’ and Social Media Partnership: A Privacy Perspective

As mobile devices and social media presence are becoming ever more integrated into daily lives, mobile games are also becoming increasingly more popular and replacing computer or handheld games. While mobile games provide convenient and timely entertainment, gaming apps also raise privacy concerns, especially when they are linked to users’ social media accounts. This connection between gaming apps and social media often allows the gaming apps to access users’ personal information. In this study we aim to address the privacy violations that may occur in this context. To conduct this study, twenty gaming apps from the Apple Store were selected and analyzed for the types of access and information exchange between social media and the gaming apps. In particular, it was alarming to learn that social media service providers were granting that access to the third-parties as well. Our analysis reveals that all twenty of the gaming apps collected users’ personal and sensitive information, while nine of the apps not only collected personal information but also were able to modify users’ information on their profile or timeline. Therefore, the goal of this study is to identify these potential privacy violations, raise gaming app users’ awareness of these privacy invasive practices, and propose initial recommendations for social media service providers and gaming app developers to provide better user privacy protections.