gdpr privacy data-protection database
Is nickname on an android app consider as personal Information for GDPR policy
<p>I am currently developing a puzzle game where the player initially has the option to enter a
&quot;NIckname&quot; of his choice ( might also be his name - its up to him what to enter) so that his
time score ( app is based on the best win times) can appear on a World Leaderboard of the top 10
times performed of the users played the game.</p>
<p><strong>My question:</strong> is  the nickname held on my database considered as personal Data since it can be anything and also a user might enter a name that might point to other people (since anyone can choose anything)?
If nickname is not consider by itself something that direct or indirect points to a specific person then i will go for it otherwise i may choose for each player a random ID.</p>
<p>My database data will be permanent ( not ephemeral) because i need to track down the best achieved times and display only the top 10.</p>
<p>Also the player will have the option to skip this step ( so no nickname for him ) and also if a nickname has been chosen the player will the option to delete his profile.</p>
<p>thank you</p>

<p>Yes such a username would be personal data. It is information that relates to an identifiable person. In this context,a person isn't identifiable only if you can infer their real-world identity, but already if you can single out one person's records. Thus, your random IDs and any linked information would be personal data as well.</p>
<p>Just because something is personal data doesn't mean that processing it is illegal. It just means you need a legal basis. That could be necessity for performing a contract with the data subject (like saving game progress), a legitimate interest, or consent. Taking into account GDPR principles like &quot;data protection by design and by default&quot;, it could be sensible to hide a players stats from the leaderboard until they give consent. On the other hand, you may have a legitimate interest to provide leaderboard data for ranking/comparison, especially if the leaderboard entries are pseudonymized. In any case, it should be clear to the users which information is visible to others.</p>

<h2>Why wouldn't it be?</h2>
<p>Nicknames are used to possibly identify people, very akin to IP addresses with a time code or a user UUID. As such, there is no way that this could not be PII.</p>
