Sen. Franken presses Apple, Google again over app store privacy
Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has once again sent a letter (PDF) to Apple and Google, this time asking for a followup on the companies’ app store privacy policies. In the letter, Franken reiterates some of the discussion that took place during a hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in early May, and asks that both companies commit to requiring all applications to have their own clear policies.
“Unfortunately, neither of your companies requires that apps on your stores have a privacy policy. As a result, a significant portion and potentially a majority of apps on your stores lack privacy policies,” Franken wrote. “Requiring that each app in your stores has a clear, understandable privacy policy would not resolve most of the privacy concerns in the mobile market. But it would be a simple first step that would provide users, privacy advocates, and federal consumer protection authorities a minimum of information about what information an app will access and how that app will share that information with third parties.”