After Google’s changes in its privacy policy, critics have begun questioning the policies adopted in case of mobile apps. In the recent past, we have seen many controversies which have surfaced in relation with app privacy. A direct consequence of such policies deters existing business standards. These models are known to use advertising as a tool in order to reduce the price users pay for an application. One such instance of privacy violation was seen in the Path and Hipster apps on the iOS platform. Both these applications were uploading information from the address book without the user’s consent. The famous social networking site Twitter was also accused of following a lackadaisical privacy policy. Even Facebook had to deny that its iPhone app was accessing private text messages.
The GSM association has retaliated to these privacy concerns by launching a set of guidelines which are aimed at greater transparency and control over applications using personal information. These guidelines were introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, this year. This construction is aimed at protecting privacy measures as an integral element of mobile software.
This new framework is designed with the aim of regaining the trust of users worldwide. Many of these guidelines have been designed with the inclusion of data protection concepts from the European Union. These concepts generally involve restraining the use of gathered data and the principles of data minimization. Implementing these guidelines will ensure smooth transmission of information and will also obtain the needed consent from the user before using user location data or enabling targeted advertising.
However, the biggest challenge in implementing these guidelines is convincing app stores to adopt this approach. Companies like Google and Apple are expected to be choosy on the issue of guidelines given that a few aspects of the aforementioned guidelines actually violate their own policy. Targeted advertising is one area where both Apple and Google are expected to think twice before actually agreeing with the proposals. On the contrary, most app sellers signed a policy in California which authorizes the staging of privacy policy, in case of applications that access such sensitive information.
Apps that do not access private data aren’t required to follow such a policy. In addition to adopting the above mentioned policy, Apple is introducing additional protection for the address book and is changing a few things on its own app store. However, all such approaches are less effective in comparison to the proposals put forward by the GSM association.
