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Recent privacy policy gains: Hellooo, mobile!

Recently there has been a huge spike in the number of mobile apps that have an explicit privacy policy. This topic has been reported quite a bit this week.

As it turns out, this wasn’t a matter of wanting to assuage any fears consumers might have regarding their data, but because of increased governmental scrutiny. Another thing that probably caused a big spike in privacy policies is the very public missteps taken by Path and Hipster: apps that uploaded your address book into their system without your express permission. Although this eventually blew over, it turned consumers’ attention to whether or not the apps they were using handled their data properly.

What can we do, in the mobile app development community, to give people more confidence? Here is a dead-simple checklist:

1. Have a privacy policy.
2. Make it easy to find.
3. Make it easy to understand.

As people become more wary of how their information is dealt with when they are using mobile apps, having a solid, plain English privacy policy is essential. This recent trend towards more openness about the policies behind apps and the data they collect is a good thing, no matter the motivation behind it.

Posted by Jenny Blumberg