The Digital Advertising Alliance has released new guidance it
says is intended to protect consumer privacy on mobile apps, including
developing a choice mechanism for location data, cross-app data and personal
directories. But it says the guidance will not be in effect or enforced on
those until the mechanism is developed and stakeholders notified. Cross-app
data is info collected about an apps use over time and across other,
non-affiliated apps.
The goal, says DAA, is to ensure that the self-regulatory
principles it says are already being enforced on the Web are being similarly
enforced in the mobile space.
The guidance focuses on increased transparency about the
collection of data across different apps, which includes how to provide notice
about data being collected over time and across different mobile applications
and the collection of location information.
The mobile app guidance is the latest set of self-regulatory
principles from the various ad associations that make up DAA -- those include
the American Advertising Federation, American Association of Advertising,
Association of National Advertisers and the Direct Marketing Association.
The new guidance follow ones on online behavioral advertising
released in 2010 and for multi-site data in 2012. The guidelines are enforced
by the Advertising Option Icon used on the DAA member websites to signal to
consumers that data is being collected and giving them a chance to opt out of
that collection. It is the mobile version of that icon that is still being
developed.
Mobile app privacy has been a priority of the Obama
Administration, which made that the first focus of its push to flesh out an online
privacy "bill of rights."
TheFederal Trade Commission last September issued its own mobile app guidelines
to help advertisers comply with "basic privacy principles."
