Google Play Threatens to Remove Apps without Privacy Policies

Google Play have been sending out notices to app developers without privacy policies in their store, threatening to switch off the lights if you do not put an adequate privacy policy in place or cease collecting “personal or sensitive data”.

Personal data is wider than most businesses think. It is far broader than information such as a person’s name, address or payment details and can include information such as a list of the apps they have installed on their phone, their phone contact list and access to their microphone and camera.

Act now to ensure that your app does not fall foul.

The Play Store’s new policy is as follows:

“If your app handles personal or sensitive user data (including personally identifiable information, financial and payment information, authentication information, phonebook or contact data, microphone and camera sensor data, and sensitive device data) then your app must:

• Post a privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Developer Console and from within the Play distributed app itself.
• Handle the user data securely, including transmitting it using modern cryptography (for example, over HTTPS).

The privacy policy must, together with any in-app disclosures, comprehensively disclose how your app collects, uses and shares user data, including the types of parties with whom it’s shared.

Prominent Disclosure Requirement

If your app collects and transmits personal or sensitive user data unrelated to functionality described prominently in the app’s listing on Google Play or in the app interface, then prior to the collection and transmission, it must prominently highlight how the user data will be used and have the user provide affirmative consent for such use.

Google Play Store Privacy Requirements (extract)”

For more detail on Google Play’s policy and advice on data protection compliance contact INFO.