Difference between lotteries and events that involve randomness? A common marketing strategy is a 'Free giveaway', where 'one lucky person will be selected from (some group) to receive a free (thing)'. I was read that such arrangements can be deemed illegal lotteries. Yet, contradictorily, I also see major websites doing this. For example on Twitch, when a subscription is 'gifted' to the community, a community member (a user who has ever, at no cost, watched or interacted with the streamer’s streams) is selected (somewhat randomly) to receive it. How does the law look differently upon a website that gives away something randomly as opposed to a software process (like Twitch's) that randomly selects someone to give a reward to? To me, (layperson) the two seem very similar, however, there must be some legal difference?
You are confusing a lottery with a sweepstakes The fundamental difference is that to enter a lottery you have to provide something of value (cash, a product purchase etc.) to receive a ticket. In a sweepstakes, tickets are free to anyone that asks in the right way. While both are games of chance, a sweepstakes is not gambling because the participants did not wager anything of value. If you read the terms and conditions of a sweepstakes very carefully, you will find there is a way of getting tickets without having to provide consideration. Getting them is often laborious and time consuming but so long as they exist, you have a sweepstake not a lottery.
Because the company that runs the contest is not in the banking or medical industry, or in another business or organization (NGO or governmental) that has to protect personal information by law, your login, email and password can be stored on pieces of paper scattered around their office and it's not illegal. And there are no laws regarding sending your information in plain text in an email. Yes, those are bad security and privacy policies, but they are not illegal. (This may vary by jurisdiction). The TOS (Terms of Serivice) you agreed to are at Eye Win Awards Privacy Policy. Part of it reads: By providing us your Information or by making use of the facilities provided by the Website, You hereby consent to the collection, storage, processing and transfer of any or all of Your Personal Information and Non-Personal Information by us as specified under this Privacy Policy. You further agree that such collection, use, storage and transfer of Your Information shall not cause any loss or wrongful gain to you or any other person. and We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. And, of course, any information you include in a posting to the discussion areas is available to anyone with Internet access. You agree to the TOS and Privacy Policy simply by registering and using the site. This is known as a click wrap (Wikipedia) contract. You can choose to stop using the service, or by the company can choose to void the contract and close your account. You can complain, but it is entirely up to the company to address your complaint or even reply to you. The Grievance Redressal contact in India is at the bottom of the link above. There are probably consumer advocacy groups in India; Google will show you those.
You present ordinary fact testimony regarding how the winner was actually selected and then you hire an expert witness to conclude that this process is sufficiently close to random for the purposes for which it is being used. In some cases of &quot;safe harbor&quot; random selection methods like rolling dice, drawing cards, drawing lots, pulling the short straw, flipping a coin, activating a random number generator, pulling a slip out of a hat, etc., you could dispense with the expert testimony because there is case law already establishing that the method in question counts as a random method of selection.
I am not aware of any law making this illegal. You need to avoid any "bait and switch" tactics, though, like initially offering cola for $1 and then not actually letting them buy it for that price.
...due to the international registration of multiple domains to generate ad revenue by recycling stories across sock puppet networks, giving the impression of multiple, independent companies. None of that is illegal on its face. Internet domains are freely registerable by anyone, anywhere (with the exception of some laws in some nations that restrict such Internet-related activity), and registered privately or publicly, and websites can be hosted anywhere. Writing articles and "spinning" and copying articles (even if that writing is sales gibberish in broken English) among the same copyright owner is legal, and using the same design and layout for a network of sites is legal. The formation of multiple, related companies and shell companies to give the impression that companies are separate and independent is legal (again, with the exception of some business and corporate laws in some nations that restrict such activity). These are all common business practices. Some business practices may appear to be unethical - trying to fool customers in order to make money and get clicks and sell ads. And what you may be feeling is that such activity is unethical. And that's OK. But feeling that they are unethical doesn't make the practices illegal. Many common activities that are considered to be unethical are illegal; but not all. Buyer beware. One way some of that activity may be illegal is if those articles are factually incorrect and promote quack medical treatments, are financial scams requiring payments, are gambling sites or promote other clearly illegal things. But then you get into the complexity of exactly how they are illegal, which jurisdictions are involved, and on and on.
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. 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.
The gambling policy to which the question links says that "gambling" under that policy includes: games of skill that offer prizes of cash or other value. From the description in the question, this exactly fits the app in question, so it ought to be rejected under the policy unless it comp[lies with the rules for an exception, which the question doesn't say it does.
You don't have to pay anything to participate. The picks offered as part of Streak for the Cash are not statistically 50/50. There are often picks with vegas lines that correspond to 60-70% for one of the sides. The test for whether something is a game of chance is not simply checking whether the options are 50/50.