Mind the lines
The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Future of Privacy Forum have published an important new resource that brings together the best practical privacy advice for mobile developers. This is an important step forward in establishing widely accepted “rules of the road”
Get it here (PDF): Best Practices for Mobile Application Developers
Here’s their key advice for developers (from the summary):
- Be completely transparent about how you are using or transmitting user data
- Don’t access more data than you need, and get rid of old data
- Give your users control over uses of data that users might not expect
- User reasonable and up-to-date security protocols to safeguard data
- As the app developer, you need to be responsible for thinking about privacy, and taking privacy into consideration during the various stages of your app life cycle
I’m pleased to have had the chance to provide input on drafts, and will work to incorporate these principles even further into the resources we provide for developers. Reaching developers with the message of best privacy practices — and making it as simple as possible to adopt them — is the next challenge. This won’t happen without the support of the major app distribution and advertising platforms. Here’s hoping we see this in 2012!
Visit our mobile privacy resource center (and make your own policy) >>