Canada asks app stores to mandate privacy policies:
“Developers are asking for information they have no real business accessing,” said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “If a flashlight app is asking to read your SMS messages, that’s a step too far.”
According to Parsons, many app developers participate in a “grey market” of personal information.
“The value is not in selling apps,” he said. “The value is in collecting information about individuals and then turning around and selling it to third parties.”
Requiring developers to include privacy plans alongside their apps “is a step in the right direction,” Parsons said, but many policies are written in “boilerplate legalese,” meaning even if they’re available, many consumers won’t be able to interpret them.
“What commissioners could do is say that if you’re going to develop a privacy policy… you should be providing a simple, accessible version of what you’re doing,” he said.
However, making privacy policies mandatory could allow agencies like the privacy commissioner’s office to better target companies who violate their own terms of service.
“What it means is that when and if a company says something in its privacy policy that’s not true, there’s an actionable legal case against them,” Parsons said.
Excited Pixels 