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Bejeweled 2 publisher PopCap responds to Wall Street Journal data-sharing allegations

WSJ article was ‘misleading’ and ‘confusing’

Bejeweled 2 publisher PopCap responds to Wall Street Journal data-sharing allegations
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| Bejeweled 2

In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal accused casual game creator PopCap of stealing your personal data through Bejeweled 2.

The paper warned iPhone and Android owners that app makers were nicking your phone number, password, and other personally identifiable info through games and apps like Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and Tweetdeck, which they then pass on to marketers in direct violation of Apple’s rules.

But the developer behind Plants vs Zombies, Zuma, and Bejeweled wants to clear up the misunderstanding. “Recent reports on user data and transmissions to third parties for a variety of iPhone applications have been misleading and possibly confusing for PopCap customers,” Ed Allard, head of studios at PopCap said in a statement to Pocket Gamer sister site PocketGamer.biz.

If you never hook up Bejeweled 2 to Facebook, the game maker will not pass on a single byte of data about you. But if you want to authenticate your game with the massively popular social network, you’ll have to supply your username and password to link the two services, and you'll also need to send across your phone number if you’ve set your Facebook account to authenticate using your number.

“The transmission of user name, password and phone number is optional and occurs only after explicit player input through a Facebook login dialog box for Blitz mode.“

App makers are, understandably, not too chuffed about the WSJ’s new article. But if Rovio and PopCap speak for everyone, they say your data is in completely safe hands.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer