How Does the Gaming Industry Protect Its Customers From Identity Theft?

Computer games are one of the most dominant forms of entertainment on the market today. In fact, according to the American Consumer Electronics Association there are more than two hundred million Americans who regularly play these games. Gaming is often equated with high-tech action or fantasy, but the history of computer games goes much deeper than that. In fact, gaming has taken on a life of its own as an incredibly popular hobby and pastime for millions of people. From casual gamers to hardcore enthusiasts, almost everyone can be found playing at least one type of computer game on a regular basis.

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One of the first types of computer games developed was an early text adventure game, which was programmed by programmers in Japanese software companies in the 1970s. The goal of the game was to facilitate communication between players, through a series of text commands. A text adventure game was a huge hit, and it continues to be a favorite to this day. The advent of computer games with actual “playing” capability brought a whole new genre to the market. Instead of requiring that you communicate through some sort of input device, now computer games require that you use your own hardware and software in order to participate in the game itself.

Throughout this development process, gaming companies often learned that it was necessary to protect the personal information that players were providing them. The original text adventure games required that players disclose their personal information such as full names and addresses, which was only reasonable given the intimate nature of the type of interaction that took place between the characters in the game. Today’s games require far more privacy, in order to ensure that the personal information of the player is kept private at all times.

Not only does this allow the gaming company to better track player demographics, but it also keeps the gaming service itself private. If the gaming service allows anyone to view in-game chat or information about other gamers, then that information could easily be obtained by third parties. Without that protection, the gaming company cannot protect its customers from fraud or other types of damage. Without a way for the customer to defend themselves against unwarranted access to their personal information, the gaming service itself becomes a potential victim of identity theft. In other words, allowing someone to read through your computer can give them the opportunity to take out your credit cards, take out loans in your name, and all of the other personal information that you don’t want other people to have.

In addition to protecting the personal information of the gamers themselves, many games now use remote servers to interact with the players. This means that instead of having gamers on a single computer, there are thousands of computers communicating with each other through the gaming service. Everything that is happening in the gaming world is happening across thousands of miles of wireless lines. Because of this, all communication is kept confidential, secure, and private. This not only protects the gaming service itself, but it also keeps gamers safe from the dangers that lurk on the Internet.

Many gaming service providers offer some form of privacy controls for their players. However, it is important to note that these personal information security measures are often very weak. Even with strong security measures, a person can easily gain access to certain areas of a gaming server. For example, hackers often get into game worlds and can get password codes. With some of today’s games, gamers may be required to enter these password codes while playing to make sure that they are using a secure server.