Friday, February 24, 2012

Privacy policies not exactly a new idea for Android apps

Google privacy

So Amazon, Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft and RIM have all decided to hold hands and form a circle around the California attorney general and agreed to privacy principles designed to bring the industry in line with a California law" that requires apps to have privacy policies. Follow all that? 

It's privacy principles that the companies have all agreed to, as well as the need to conspicuously display them in the app somewhere. And chances are you'll see them all roll out some guidelines to developers in the coming months, rather than leaving the devs to come up with them on their own. 

Privacy policies aren't exactly a new thing for Android apps. Go all the way back to an Aug. 4, 2010 blog post from Nick Kralevich of the Android Security Team titled "Best Practices for Handing Android User Data." What's the No. 1 tip he had for developers? 

  1. Maintain a privacy policy.

The other nine suggestions really should be mandatory as well, including minimizing the permissions needed, giving users a choice regarding data collection, and using encryption. Common sense stuff. But it's wild world out there, no? Not every app has a conspicuous privacy policy -- that goes from Google to Android Central to, well, far more applications than we'd like to see. (You can find our site policies at the very bottom of this page.)

The proprietors of the major app stores coming together for a common set of privacy policies as well how to best present those policies to the us, the users is a good thing. A very good thing. Now we just need to see better implementation.

More: California Attorney General's Office; more at iMore.com



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/PB9UV_KGr7o/story01.htm

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