Put simply, VR encompasses computer technologies, which simulate environments and let users interact in those environments. While different corporate environments are continually embracing virtual reality technologies for training and educational purposes, VR products are also becoming steadily popular with general customers for gaming.

Before the emergence of VR, we knew that our personal information like age, location, shopping preferences, social security number, medical history, bank account access information etc can only be gleaned from the internet. But today, VR is threatening our privacy from a unique level by knowing how we move around physically to the brain waves emitted by us. Even though the wide adoption of VR technology is much slower, red flags have already been raised by privacy advocates.

What about privacy policies?

Every big VR brand product always comes with a privacy policy that clearly states what exactly the companies are getting from you and what they’re allowed to do with that data. The language may change slightly from one brand to another, but they convey essentially the same concept. Let’s have a look at the common clauses.

Collect location-based information: This involves things like the country you live in and your time zone that ensure the user experience is relevant to you with time-sensitive software upgrades and proper language availability.

This involves things like the country you live in and your time zone that ensure the user experience is relevant to you with time-sensitive software upgrades and proper language availability. Use cookies and/or beacons: Beacons are a way for your device to communicate with a server and cookies are tiny files that store things like your preferences etc to provide you with a better user experience.

Beacons are a way for your device to communicate with a server and cookies are tiny files that store things like your preferences etc to provide you with a better user experience. Use your information to guide their marketing toward you: You’ll receive notifications of promotions and contests, customized product recommendations, customized content and advertising etc.

You’ll receive notifications of promotions and contests, customized product recommendations, customized content and advertising etc. Never guarantee your information is completely safe: the Key reason for this is unforeseen security breaches.

the Key reason for this is unforeseen security breaches. Store a record of social communication made through the features of your VR: There’ll always be a record whenever you communicate with someone.

Privacy issues with VR

When you’re experiencing VR, you’re granting access to a significant amount of your personal information to not only the VR company but to its subsidiary companies as well. Though today’s VR applications are very basic experiences, VR environments will become more and more realistic and immersive with the advancement of technology, which in turn would allow service providers to monitor each of your whereabouts. And this could be harmful to your privacy if maliciously used. Here’re some prominent privacy concerns with VR.

The information you share with your VR provider may be transferred to servers located throughout the world at the company’s discretion as each of the big names is a global company. Once your information is “over there,” it becomes subject to laws of that place which may be less enforceable or stable.

If a VR provider collects detailed information about the way you behave in a virtual world, cybercriminals can get their hands on it. All these digital breadcrumbs of yours can be collected to create a montage of your life. And this montage is the platform that hackers use to conduct malicious activities.

If the appropriate privacy and security considerations aren’t paid attention to or not adhered to, there remains a potential concern in the form of breaches. It can happen if the personal information that customers submit to the makers of VR gears and related applications as part of the payment processes and product registration isn’t properly protected.

Personal and payment information submitted to a VR technology and app vendor from within the VR platform can also lead to potential dangers if they’re accessed by hackers.

Like any connected device, which is part of the IoT, some VR platforms may be designed without strict security mechanisms, which can lead to potential data theft. In addition, communication between VR devices and servers may be sent unencrypted, which can create an open window for hackers to exploit.

Oculus VR platform and user data

For the sake of proper functionality, VR platforms including Oculus, which is owned by Facebook, collect a huge amount of detailed user information. As Facebook already holds a negative track record of protecting users’ privacy, how much of your personal information is at risk when you use an Oculus VR headset? According to the privacy policy of Oculus, it can receive and share information from Facebook and services owned by it. To date, Oculus claims that it utilizes this option in a very limited way like not sharing users’ data with Facebook for third-party advertising. Though Oculus hasn’t had any significant privacy blowup like Facebook, it’s leaving the options open and if you’re concerned about VR’s privacy implications in the long-term, it’s better to adopt some security measures.

Mitigating the risk

Keeping in mind the huge amount of unique data privacy risks associated with VR technology, it has become crucial to getting security right. Here’re some key security measures you should implement when using VR.

Change default settings of the VR gadgets.

Set up separate email addresses and passwords for devices that operate in virtual environments.

Use a VPN to make all your internet communication pass through a point-to-point encrypted tunnel. Go for something like PIA VPN that offers multiple VPN technologies like PPTP, OpenVPN, SOCKS5 etc.

Unquestionably, VR is only going to get more real over time. The concerns and challenges around it will continue. You just need to implement adequate security measures to make the most of it.