Would you consider not publically posting personal stats with names of people who are not not signed on to service and do not want their information made public?
Good thing that Brooklyn brought up that issue again. I followed the discussion about it in the tracker thread and imo all pro arguments was flawed.
I will ask but I am one that would make the claim that information is not your personal information that is MA's information and when it is broadcast across the HOF or Global messages it is being boradcast for everyone to see. This program just stores that information for later viewing, It would be no different than if I sat with a notebook and pen and wrote down everytime the message was displayed on my screen.
What you write down with pen and notebook does not bother anyone as long as you don't publish it. The point is not how the data is collected but that it is made public available.
However, in most western countries even the collecting of data is regulated as soon as you earn money from it in any way.
There is an difference in laws if someone collects data for private purpose or if he does it commercial (and it is commercial as soon as someone
tries to earn money from it, no matter if successful, or how little money it is.) Entropiatracker falls into the commercial category.
Then there is the argument that globals are public data anyway, and that the tracker can't violate privacy by collecting and publishing them.
Well, thats an easy one. We could argue if the global chat inside EU is public data, when i log into EU i agree that others can somehow follow my activity and the global chat is an integral part of EU. What the tracker does is something different though. It tracks my activities, long term archive and publish it without my direct or indirect agreement. Big difference here, but i don't even need to go into that because it would not matter at all if it is "public data" anyway.
I give you an real life example. Lets say you sit at the side of an public road an write down the license plating (registration number) of every car that passes by. That in itself is not illegal in most countries, for private purpose.
Publishing those data on an website however will bring you in big troubles. Asking money for in depth analysis of those data will bring you in even more troubles.
But why? The drivers of the car did drive in public, for everyone visible. Nothing "private" about that. And even more important, you can't so easy conclude from an car's registration number to the driver anyway (different in some countries), like you can't so easy get the real life identity from an EU ava name. Still this all is regulated because one could generate an pattern of movement, behave or however that is called in english from those data. And that falls under privacy, and that is actually covered by most countries law and is exactly how entropiatracker violates privacy.
As long as entropiatracker does not have an strict opt in policy this will be an issue and Starfinder should adress it in your Q/A. The way he handled it in the tracker thread was in no way satisfying.
Just to clarify, i personally do like the tracker and i am fine with my globals tracked there and i appreciate the work Starfinder and tussy and maybe others put into that, but thats not the point here.
