Google’s Down With California’s OPP Act – Developers Will Need To Include Privacy Policies For Apps That Collect Data
We saw this coming and now, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, Amazon and HP have all agreed to make developers’ lives a little more difficult by including mandatory privacy policies to go along with their apps before a user can purchase or download them. This is all thanks to California’s Online Privacy Protection Act which recently has been made to include mobile apps.
There was no specific time table given on how long each of these big companies will have to comply with the act, but the Attorney General’s office will apparently be checking up with each individual company in about 6 months. If the Big 6 don’t comply, the AG has made it clear they’ll face a fat lawsuit from the state of California herself. Google was the first of the 6 to step up and declare that changes will be made to the Android Market “in the coming weeks.”
When it comes to the Android Market, privacy policies are seemingly already in effect under the permissions tab, where a user can see what kind of permissions an app asks for from their device. With some minor tweaking, or a more prevalent pop-up when installing apps, seems Android is already covered. But, depending on Google’s new Market requirements (which haven’t been disclosed as of yet), developers could be facing the trouble of having to create full legal privacy policies for any and all kinds of user information they collect. This, of course, is all done to protect the user by giving them a privacy policy they will no doubt skip through, but it could give developers a much harder time when publishing their apps to the Market, seeing as now they will have to come up with “legal speak” to protect themselves in the event of lawsuit from an angry user.
We’ll have to wait to see how it all plays out. It’s possible Google could give devs a nice legal template for permissions requested, making everyone’s lives a little easier. Or devs will have to call up their lawyer to draft something up. I guess the only question that now remains is… are you guys down wit OPP? (I’m sorry, you had to know that was coming).
[Attorney General’s Office | Via Cnet]