After announcing the new privacy policy for developers, Google has revealed an in-progress design for Android’s Play Store privacy section. The new safety section will be dedicated to information on an app’s data collection, privacy, and security practices.
Does that sound like something familiar? Of course, it does, because is the same as Apple’s privacy ‘nutrition’ labels on App Store introduced in iOS 14. To bring transparency on how app function and handle users’ data, Apple made it mandatory for all apps, native and third-party, to detail that information on their app’s page so that users read it before downloading the app. And that is what Google’s new privacy section is implementing as well.
Not only the feature, but Google also copied Apple’s privacy labels implementation policy as well
The new safety section will appear in the first quart of 2022 on the Play Store. And as seen in the shared screenshots of the section, an app’s privacy policy will be listed before the ‘Ratings & Reviews section. In addition to the app’s data privacy practices, a “See details” sub-section will list information on how the app uses the collected data and if the data collection is required for using the app.
A “no information available” message will display for the app’s privacy practices for developers who fail details at the time of launch. However, Google will block the defaulting app’s update until the privacy section shows the required information. Apple used the same strategy to ensure developers self-report their privacy information.
Privacy is of utmost importance for smartphone users because it is one device that stays with them for most time of the day and holds their personal and sensitive information. Therefore, Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi said that he would like competitors, the obvious one is Google, to copy its privacy labels for the betterment of users.
“The work we’re doing here we view in the context of providing leadership to the industry, raising users’ expectations of what they should expect and demand in privacy. And we absolutely expect that others in the industry will respond to the heightened expectations and demands of customers and improve privacy—and we think that’s great.
This is one category where if they want to copy some of our best ideas toward improving user privacy—we embrace that.”
And Google indirectly took the advice. In the Android 12 update, Google introduced iOS 14 inspired privacy features like Privacy Dashboard to display which app uses the smartphone’s microphone, camera and approximate location, and more. It is also reported that the search engine giant is exploring an App Tracking Transparency like promote for Android to allow users to opt-in tracking.
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