Facebook signs up to privacy policy commitments for mobile apps

Facebook launched the mobile apps store earlier this month and in a letter to California's Attorney General Kamala Harris the company said that it had been guided by privacy principles developed in the state earlier this year when building the service.

In February Harris announced that Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Research In Motion had all agreed to sign a privacy agreement (2-page / 105KB PDF) committing them to ensure that app developers provide users with access to a privacy policy before downloading their apps.

Under the agreement the platforms must also ensure that app developers also display their privacy policies in a "consistent location" on the "application-download screen", according to a statement by Harris' office in February. The signatories must also educate app developers "about their obligations to respect consumer privacy and to disclose to consumers what private information they collect, how they use the information, and with whom they share it."

The agreement was forged in an attempt by Harris to commit companies to abide by standards set out in Californian state law. Under the California Online Privacy Protection Act operators of commercial websites and online services, including mobile apps, are required to "conspicuously post a privacy policy" if they collect personal data.

In outlining Facebook's intention to sign up to privacy agreement the social network's chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, said that "building principles of transparency, control, and accountability" in the mobile app "ecosystem" was "essential to promoting our users' trust in the mobile platform."

"The App Center provides a centralized place where our users can learn more about participating Facebook apps, read their privacy policies, and, where necessary, report problems," Egan said in her letter (2-page / 334KB PDF) to California's Attorney General.

"We are committed to building transparency, control, and accountability into all of our products, and we believe that the App Center empowers users to learn about the policies that will apply to data collected when they use mobile apps included in the Facebook App Center and to make informed choices about which apps they wish to use," she said.

"As we built the App Center, we were guided by the principles contained in the [February] Joint Statement. We believe that the principles are reflected in the App Center, and the result is a meaningful privacy experience for everyone who uses applications on Facebook," Egan said.

In a statement Attorney General Harris welcomed Facebook's signing of the privacy agreement and said that "consumers deserve to be able to make informed choices about how much personal information they want to share with others when using social apps."

"California law requires all operators of commercial web sites and online services, including mobile and social apps, who collect personally identifiable information about Californians to conspicuously post a privacy policy," Harris said in a letter (2-page / 87KB PDF) to Facebook. "We are very pleased that Facebook has incorporated the Principles into the design of the App Center and that Facebook requires, as a condition of participating in the App Center, that developers submit a link to a privacy policy." 

"We are also pleased to see that Facebook is prominently displaying the link to an app’s privacy policy in the App Center, and is implementing a means to report and remediate privacy issues," she said.

App developers that fail to abide by their stated privacy policies can be prosecuted under unfair competition and false advertising laws in California.