What Is Non-Personal Information and When Does EA Collect It?

Non-personal information, alone, cannot be used to identify or contact you. EA collects non-personal information about your use of our online and mobile products and services both on our website and in the course of game play and software usage (on PC, mobile and game system platforms).

We will retain your information for as long as your Origin Account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your Origin Account or request that we no longer use your information contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country listed on our site at privacyadmin.ea.com, or if your country is not listed, by contacting the Privacy Policy Administrator in the United States.   There may be instances where we are legally required to retain your information.

A. What Types of Non-Personal Information Does EA Collect?

When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or game system, we may collect certain non-personally identifiable information for purposes including improving our products and services, troubleshooting bugs, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of software updates, dynamically served content and product support as well as communicating with you. The non-personal information collected may include demographic information including gender, age, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, game system, media, mobile device, including unique device IDs or other device identifiers, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as username, user ID or persona, feature usage, game play statistics, scores and achievements, user rankings, time spent playing our games, and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles such as friends lists or purchases, for instance. We may also receive information from third parties in connection with market and demographic studies and/or other data that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.

B. How Does EA Collect Non-Personal Information?
EA collects non-personal information along with personal information when you actively provide it in the context of various online and mobile activities including online and mobile purchases, game registration and marketing surveys, for instance. In addition, we and other third parties use cookies and other technologies to passively collect non-personal demographic information, personalize your experience on our sites and monitor advertisements and other activities as described below.  We may also derive from the information collected other facts, such as determining the applicable tax rate based on your IP address.

1. Cookies

Cookies are small files applied to your Internet browser to track movements within websites. We may link cookie information to personal information. Cookies link to information regarding what items you have selected for purchase at our store, pages you have viewed, or games you have played. This information is used to keep track of your shopping cart and make sure you don't see the same ad repeatedly, for example. Also, we use cookies to deliver content specific to your interest and to monitor website or game usage. We and third parties collect information on what games are played, how much time is spent playing the games and which ads or links are clicked. Some of our sites use an outside ad company to display ads. These ads contain cookies. Cookies received with banner ads are applied by our ad companies, and EA does not have access to this information. Most browsers are automatically set to accept cookies whenever you visit a website. You can disable cookies or set your browser to alert you when cookies are being sent. However some areas of our sites will not function properly if you do so. You can set your web browser to warn you about attempts to place cookies on your computer, or limit the type of cookies you allow. For more information concerning how to disable your cookies, please visit help.ea.com.
 
We and other third parties may also use flash cookies, also known as "local shared objects," on our sites that employ Flash technology. Flash cookies are small files similar to browser cookies and are used to remember the site's settings to personalize the look and feel of the site. Like normal cookies, Flash cookies are represented as small files on your computer. One method of preventing Flash cookies from being placed is to adjust your preferences in the Macromedia Website Privacy Settings Panel at www.macromedia.com.

If you disable cookies, you may lose some of the features and functionality of playing our games, as cookies are necessary to track and enhance your game activities. Please note that companies delivering advertisements in our games or on our websites may also use cookies or other technologies, and those practices are subject to their own policies.

Please note that this privacy policy covers the use of cookies by EA only and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

2. Clear GIFs And Tracking Pixels

Clear GIFs (a.k.a. web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We do not use clear GIFs to collect personal information about you. However, we may use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a user to personalize user experience and for statistical analysis of user experiences on our web pages.  

We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by excluding our current users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.

3. Internet Log Files

EA and other third parties also may maintain log files which contain IP addresses. An IP address is a numeric address that may be assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider. In general, we use log files to monitor traffic on our websites, to troubleshoot technical problems and authenticate users' entitlements to our products. In the event of user abuse of our websites, however, we may block certain IP addresses or game system IDs provided by our licensed hardware manufacturers. If available, IP addresses and game system IDs may be used in order to enforce our Terms of Service.

4. Analytic Metrics Tools and Other Technologies

EA also uses its own proprietary analytic metrics tool and other third party analytics technologies to collect information when you use our online products and services and/or play our games on your PC, game system and/or mobile device. These tools and technologies use server log files, web beacons, cookies, tracking pixels and other technologies to collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), mobile or other hardware device ID or other device identifiers, browser types, browser language, information passed from your browser (if any), referring and exit pages, and URLs, platform type, click information, information about your media, peripheral hardware, software and/or applications installed on your machine and/or device, domain names and types, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, advertising conversion rates, the date and amount of time spent on particular pages, other Internet and website usage information, game state and the date and time of activity on our websites or games, information about how your game is used, including game metrics and statistics, feature usage and purchase history, as well as unique hardware identifiers such as MAC Address, mobile unique device ID (if applicable) and other similar information. 

The third party analytics companies who collect information on our sites and in the context of our online and mobile products and/or services may combine the information collected with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your activities across their network of websites as well as online and/or mobile products and services. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies. 

Some EA websites and services use Google Analytics, a web analytic service offered by Google Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics uses "Cookies", text files that are stored on your PC and that enables the analysis of your usage of this website. The information about your usage of websites, collected through these cookies, will be transmitted to and stored on Google server based in the US.  On behalf of EA, Google will use this information in order to evaluate your usage of this websites, to make reports on website activities and/or to provide the website operator with other services related to this websites. Your IP-address collected by Google Analytics will not be matched up with other data of Google. You may prevent the installation of cookies by adjusting your browser settings.  Please note that if you disable cookies, it is possible that you may not use all functionalities of EA's websites. You may also prevent the cookies from collecting and storing your information by downloading and installing the following browser-plugin under the following link http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

A non-exclusive list of the other analytics companies that operate their own technologies on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com. 

5. Ad Serving Technology

EA's websites, online or mobile products or services may employ proprietary or third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track results.  Some dynamic in-game advertisement serving technology enable advertising to be temporarily uploaded into your game, web browser or mobile device and replaced while you are online.  We or third parties operating the advertisement serving technology may use information such as age and gender as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented within the site, online or mobile product or service  and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or deliver ads that relate to your interests and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns.   We or third parties may collect data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), device ID's, information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisement(s) served, in game location, length of time an advertisement was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisement, advertisement response (if any), and angle of view.  The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology.

The advertising companies who deliver ads for us may combine the information collected or obtained from EA with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your web browser's activities across their network of websites. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies. 

A non-exclusive list of ad serving companies that operate their own networks on our sites and online and/or mobile products and/or services can be found at privacyappendix.ea.com. 

For more information about the practices of other large ad serving companies that may collect information based on your interaction with ads on this site, in our mobile products, and other sites or products not owned/managed by EA, or to "opt out" of targeted advertising delivered by National Advertising Initiative (NAI) member ad networks, you should visit www.networkadvertising.org.

For more information about targeted advertising within our mobile products or to opt out, see the appendix to this policy at privacyappendix.ea.com.

These ad serving technologies are integrated into our sites, online or mobile products and services; if you do not want to use this technology, do not play. 

6. Anti-Cheat and Fraud Prevention Technologies

EA strives to provide a safe and fair gaming environment to all players of its games. To prevent fraudulent activities and behaviors that may negatively affect the experiences of a player, EA is authorized to use "anti-cheating" software, or applications for the prevention of fraud for our internet presence, during the use of our online products and/or services (including online games), and mobile platforms.

At login to EA online products and/or services, during the setup of an Origin account, and/or at the point of sale, EA may collect data about your device in order  to create a hash of machine components.  Information collected for this purpose shall not be stored in retrievable form.  EA uses the collected information for the prevention of fraud, and for authentication purposes. EA may consolidate the machine hash created for this purpose with your Origin account; data consolidated this way will not be shared with any other third party, and will be used exclusively for security, fraud prevention and authentication purposes by EA.