There are many stories in the wires recently regarding protecting personal information. A reasonable approach to Personal information privacy is needed. Unfortunately, Government policy may be needed to enforce it.
I believe user trust in privacy policies is essential for mobile adoption to continue its growth trajectory, especially in business-to-consumer applications. However, privacy policy compliance should also be considered for employee based applications – since these employees are also citizens of countries that require data protection practices. At the end of the day, your employees are consumers first, and they are likely to have the same concerns in the workplace as they do at home. More than ever before, employees expect the same kind of experience at work as they receive in their personal lives – especially when it comes to mobile technology and privacy.
Many countries have had data protection laws on the books for years. However, they are not being enforced to a large degree. I expect that to change significantly in 2012. For example, the UK has had a data protection act since 1998. The EU has just recently – as of Jan 25, 2012 – drafted a new regulation for data protection that will supersede a prior policy. Awareness has tipped and the mobile industry needs to pay attention to these laws and policies at the price of losing subscribers and users.
What type of information requires protection? There’s a term for this – Personally identifiable information (PII): Your identity, location, network address, payment info, phone numbers, vehicle tags, driver’s license number, date of birth, birthplace, national ID numbers, and more. The current definition of PII does not address social network concepts so add to that list your social “friends” and their PII. You can certainly understand how this data protection issue grows exponentially with the advent of cloud-based social apps and networks. In the news just recently several social services, like Twitter and Foursquare have been caught gathering user contact info from their devices without direct consent of the user. This has since been addressed to a degree but it’s a great example of the issue.
Device vendors, social networks, content providers, carriers, app developers and enterprises all have a role to play to protect consumers’ personal information. I agree that this is required but a reasonable approach must be taken that provides sufficient protection and consumer awareness but is not “heavy” in terms of government regulation and compliance.
There’s a balance point here that the major industry players and government agencies must define and agree upon. I applaud the recent Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, HP and RIM agreement with the AG of California.
And at Antenna, our platforms will continue to be compliant with the emerging policies across the globe.
Tags: Apple, consumer protection, Google, HP, Mobile Apps, privacy, RIM
