As far as I can see, all you are pointing out is that their policy contradicts itself. They reserve the right to pass your information on, then later they say they don't. That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

As I said before, the GA stuff in itself doesn't bother me, but I do consider it to be the passing of at least partially personal information to a third party without my explicit knowledge or consent. That does bother me, and I'm surprised it doesn't bother you.

Edit: And yes, they most certainly legally could use a clause specifically stating which circumstances would cause them to pass your information on, and to whom it would be passed. Why wouldn't they be able to?

It's not contradiction because they are delineating two different scenarios - one when they are forced comply with a legal situation or believe legal situation to be in play and the other is normal business operations. In the former, they can share your personal info - what little they have - and in the latter, they can't.

I suppose I'm not bothered because there is really little no actually personal info on this site - there is no credit card, no real name, no address, no phone number, etc ... Further I can change what info there is on here to whatever I want. Lastly what their passing is not personally identifiable. It's a statistic which despite what the OP has said does not seem linkable to you without getting into GOG's servers. I've already stated - would it be better if they didn't pass anything at all or even just removed the unique transaction ID? Absolutely ... and in the spirit of their privacy policy, I think they should do that and better yet, develop whatever they use GA for, in-house. But I'm not going to make a capital case out of it if they prioritize other upgrades to the website first because they're not passing personal info that in any way can be traced to me.
It's to cover their ass - they may not be able to predict all the scenarios in which they are obligated to pass on information or would feel the need in a case of a business problem or the agencies they would need contact therein. This stops someone from being able to sue GOG.com for passing on information on scenarios outside of normal business operations. That's what they are worried about. However, again, they cannot use this clause in normal business operations to pass on your info. That would be fraud as their privacy policy would be deliberately misleading.

No you misunderstood - and I wasn't clear - GOG doesn't have much or any *important* personal info and no personal info that I can't alter from reality. :) The personal info they store is all set by me and I don't even have to give them anything real (or at all). The most personal thing they actually have is an e-mail address (which I can make a junk one to give them), but which if it suddenly started receiving spam because of GOG, yes I would be very annoyed with GOG. :)

They only other things they save are the IP address you use to count visitors - but they don't link it to your account. That's probably, if it were linked to you, the most personal of the information they store, but it's not (according to their policy) linked to you.

They explicitly state they don't save CC info - so no name, no CC, (and GOG doesn't ask for an address, but even if they did, they wouldn't store it). Further the info they pass to GA is not identifying to me or my purchase, Google doesn't know I made a purchase, they know someone did. So essentially there is nothing really on this site that is personally identifying and that's the way I like it. :) Take a look at your account, you can see everything they store and anything personal is settable by you - you don't have to take my word for it.

But we can also agree to disagree to, that's fine by me. :)

Try paying here via paypal. If the info you gave them doesn't match the info you give paypal, the transaction doesn't go through. That means they store information about your payment, just not the financial side of the transaction in terms of card details.

There is no justification for saving IP addresses to track web traffic. Even Microsoft explicitly states that they don't do it, so why should GOG?

And if the information is so unimportant, why do they save it, and why does google want it? Surely it's not just for sentimental value?

Sorry, couldn't stop myself. This time I really will try to leave the thread alone, at least until there is some official response. And that does seem to be a point that we agree on, that this does at least warrant some form of official explanation.

No worries, I totally understand. I have trouble quitting arguments too. :) So in that vein, I'll do us both a favor and won't make any counter-arguments no matter how brilliant and convincing they would be - and naturally they would be. :P

The funny part is that actually happens and no one cares about that either.

And why does the forum show this thread having a GOG staff answer?:)

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, all of that rubbish, I don't use any of them but yet I cannot shake this unquenchable hatred for everything they are, everything they stand for.

Oh well, I'll just shuffle off and play some video games now.

And unless you're buying some weird sex toys, most of the people want to show off with things they buy. For virtual dick lenght points.

So, summing up the facts so far:

- GOG saves info on games sold and checkout values into Google Analytics tool, without adding any user information to it
- Privacy policy does say that they do not share "your personal details" with "third parties". However, game names or order values without your email / name / user ID, is not a "personal detail" by any chance

So, does GOG need a consent each time to send an information to their stats tool, that a copy of X was just sold, without saying who bought it? I doubt that. Maybe they could improve the Privacy Policy to mention using third party software to analyze anonymized traffic data (this would be nice) but that's it.

No, this is not an accurate summation of what GOG are doing.

The key point you've skipped over is that this is a client side script. This means the information is not being sent by GOG, it is being sent by you. This has the advantage that I can stop it being sent, but the disadvantage the your average joe cannot, or does not know to.

When you send information client side, you also send your IP address, your browser footprint, and any cookies you've picked up along the way that are also owned by that domain. For most users, this is as good as an individual ID.

GOG isn't saving IP addresses to track you. GA uses IP addresses to differentiate between unique visitors. That is all. You guys really need to calm down and stop jumping to conclusions.

Jesus H. Christ, would you look at all that text that's still being posted on this topic! some people must be seriously bored. what a waste of time and energy.

friggin' hilarious that GOG staff have still not bothered replying to the OP. they're probably laughing their asses off while pelting each other with tinfoil pellets.

You seem to be the one jumping to conclusions without even reading what I've written. If you're not even going to look at what my problem is with this, then don't tell me what conclusions you think I've drawn. That's just silly.

Again, the issue here is a very simple one; Disclosure. It wasn't provided and it should have been.

@FredDM, there's no need to be so condescending. Even if you don't personally have an issue with it, clearly some people do, and to label them all as idiots is simply ignorant and bigoted.