Today, our privacy expert Dylan Curran examines the details of Reddit’s privacy policy. Reddit is a social news aggregator / discussion website that relies on user contributed content. Founded in 2005, by February 2018 it could boast of 542 million monthly visitors.
Curran wastes no time getting right down to business, “Reddit’s privacy is suspect to a degree — you define exactly what your interests are, Reddit collects this information, then personalizes the advertising based on those interests. It’s a nice eco-system where users willingly participate in telling Reddit exactly what they like and don’t like.”
“The only redeeming factor,“ he continues, “Is that there is absolutely no need for you to reveal your actual identity. Contrasting with Google, where you’re forced to reveal your identity, you can push as much information to Reddit as you like and they won’t necessarily just rip it from you like other tech companies such as Facebook.”
Let’s get into the details, starting with what information Reddit collects:
WHAT WE COLLECT
Account Information
A user name and password
(although your username doesn’t have to be your real name);
You have the choice to provide an e-mail address;
And they store your user account preferences and settings.Content You Submit
Your posts and comments — including saved ;
Your messages with other users (e.g. private messages, chats, and modmail);
Your reports and other communications with moderators and Reddit.Actions You Take
Interactions with content, such as voting, saving, hiding or reporting;
Interactions with other users, such as following, friending, and blocking;
Interactions with communities, like your subscriptions or moderator status.Information We Collect Automatically
Log and usage data, such as IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information, pages visited, links clicked, requested URL, hardware settings, and search terms. Reddit will delete any IP addresses collected after 100 days;
Location information, we may collect your location by using GPS or Bluetooth, or by associating your content with a location, or we may derive your approximate location from your IP address.
“This is an absolute mountain of information,” Curran begins. “When you consider how frequently you’re interacting with Reddit even if you only use it for five minutes a day.” He then breaks it down for us into simple actions, “Such as up-voting a post or down-voting a comment, is recorded by Reddit and added to your account identity. Up-voting a post about cats, indicates to Reddit that you like cats, down-voting a comment that says cats are better than dogs, indicates to Reddit that you like dogs. Subscribing to communities such as /r/Privacy will ironically show Reddit you’re interested in privacy, and you may see ads relevant to cyber-security. Frequently commenting on posts from /r/Politics will show you’re heavily interested in politics, and frequently looking at /r/Conservative is even better for Reddit as now they can narrow down your political view to better target advertising.”
“When you take into consideration the multi-dimensional and accurate persona Reddit can build about you, it’s incredibly worrying that that information could be tied to your personal identity.”
They then provide this typical explanation is offered up by Reddit to justify how they use their information:
HOW WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU
To provide, maintain, and improve the services;
Research and develop new services;
Help protect the safety of Reddit and our users;
Sending you technical notices, updates, security alerts, invoices, and other support messages;
Provide customer service;
Communicate with you about products and services;
Monitor and analyze trends;
And, most importantly, to personalize the services and provide advertisements, content, and features that match user profiles or interests.
Curran continues to drum the message home, “As I’ve already explained, it seems obvious Reddit would collect your interests and use it for advertising, but when you take into consideration the multi-dimensional and accurate persona Reddit can build about you, it’s incredibly worrying that that information could be tied to your personal identity. Combined with Reddit stating they sometimes collect your location information, I would be very careful about posting anything that might reveal who you actually are on Reddit.”
THE VERDICT
“Reddit, like any social media website, is a tool to collect user information and serve you advertising based on that data,” Curran sums up. “Just based on their business model alone they are going to have to violate your privacy in order to make any money. However, the positive is that there is no pressure to reveal your true identity on Reddit unlike other social media websites. Reddit can build this incredibly accurate persona about you, all the while it’s not actually tied to your name. Overall, I’m going to give Reddit a 3/5 star rating, but if you take some precautions and don’t even give Reddit your e-mail address or post any content with your real name or location, there is no reason you can’t use Reddit privately.”
So there you have it, Reddit gets a 3 out of 5 stars from our privacy expert Dylan Curran.
You can watch/listen to the entire privacy review here:
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