Robert Heaton:

Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom’s privacy policy. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? I wondered. Sensing skullduggery, I decided to make an exception to my anti-privacy-policy-policy and give this one a read.

In section 3.1 of their privacy policy, Wacom wondered if it would be OK if they sent a few bits and bobs of data from my computer to Google Analytics.

Wacom didn’t say exactly what data they were going to send themselves. I resolved to find out.

Wacom will undoubtedly offer a heartfelt apology and explanation as to why they do this but the big question will be, for how long have they been doing this and what do they do with the data? The other part of this is I wish I had half the technical chops this guy does.