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Angry Birds developer Rovio has vehemently denied it has acted underhandedly in sending data to third party companies.
A Wall Street Journal investigation into the matter spoke of numerous app developers “sharing personal data widely and regularly” in “violation” of Apple rules.
Rovio told Develop that it does transmit user data to third parties, but claimed this was of no risk to the user.
“Angry Birds does not under any circumstances collect or store personally identifiable information that could be connected in any way to individual users,” the group said in response to the claims.
The developer said the Wall Street journal report was “vague enough to instigate mistrust in our users”.
It added: “Absolutely none of this has anything to do with advertisers – we don’t have advertising in our games on the iOS.”
A spokesperson for the firm said Rovio transmits user data to two sources and applications, and claimed that neither instances were involved any kind of detached advertising firm.
Rovio uses the Crystal social gaming platform and Flurry analytical software to transmit Angry Birds user data, the spokesperson said.
“Crystal does not store any personal information, as insinuated by the WSJ article, nor does it utilise any data without the user’s explicit knowledge.”
The spokesperson continued: “Flurry collects analytical data to display numerical data such as numbers of users per different countries based on Phone ID and general location. This information is only displayed as aggregate statistics – Flurry never stores or displays any data pertaining to an individual.”
The Wall Street Journal has claimed that Rovio sends info regarding usernames, passwords, location data and a unique phone IDs.
Rovio claimed it uses this data “to improve the quality and scalability of our service now and in the future”.
Develop has contacted other parties and publications for clarification.
