Glossing over privacy considerations

Mobile applications can be cheap and cheerful, developed for as little as a few thousand dollars in just weeks or months. But in the rush to get them to the highly competitive market, some enterprising developers may be overlooking established rules around user privacy — a risky move that can lead to public relations nightmares and even the app’s ultimate failure.

More than half of U.S. app users have either uninstalled an app or declined to download it in the first place over concerns about how their personal information would be used, according to a September report by the Pew Research Center.

Partly in response to that research, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, along with its provincial counterparts from Alberta and British Columbia,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. published a document outlining good practices mobile app makers should follow to avoid that sort of fallout.The oreck XL professional air purifier,

“The mobile environment, along with the new app economy it has generated, is a rapidly evolving new frontier,” stated the guidelines, released in October. “As with past frontiers, it is filled with both richness and potential but also risks.”

“In Canada, there is an expectation and a legal requirement that app users are to be informed of what information is being collected, used and disclosed about them… and for their consent to be meaningful,” the guidelines said, noting that the popularity of apps means increased scrutiny of privacy practices going forward is likely.

James Sapara is the chief technical officer at Picatic E-ticket Inc., a Toronto-based online ticket sales company. In September, the company launched EventTilt,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. a new product that lets organizers crowdfund an event to canvas interest and demand before committing to put it on.

Given its business, Picatic collects a lot of potentially sensitive information from both event promoters and attendees.

“One of the important things is to be clear about what you intend to do with information,” Mr.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. Sapara said.

He noted that working with a merchant account provider that handles credit card transactions may force some companies to be more proactive about developing privacy policies from the start as the merchant provider often requires it.

“A lot of startups are super lean and super fast, so I would say that it’s possible that some startups would probably miss some of those things,” he added.

“It is very difficult for startups to navigate around privacy rules,” said Joshua Gans, chair of technical innovation and entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management. “I think a lot of startups end up not worrying about it, in the idea that they will have to deal with it if they become as successful as Facebook.”

Mr. Gans noted that hiring a lawyer to provide advice on privacy issues is not always a priority for many resource-strapped startups.

One painful example of the possible blowback over privacy issues came earlier this year courtesy of San Francisco-based Path.

The startup came under fire for its practice of automatically uploading users’ phone contacts to its social networking app to make better friend recommendations, without asking for permission in advance. The company posted a public apology in February and said it was deleting the information from its servers and going forward it would ask users whether they wanted to share that information.

In Canada, the federal privacy commissioner warned in September that it had privacy concerns about 11 leading websites out of a sample of 25 (declining to name any of the sites involved) and noted that users’ information could be passed along to third parties without their knowledge or permission.

Public concern over how personal information is used can also be seen in two recent class-action lawsuits launched in British Columbia. In early October, Wayne Plimmer sued Google Inc. over the way in which it uses data found in Gmail messages and at the end of the month Amanda Ladas filed a suit against Apple Inc. alleging that its iOS4 (an older version of its mobile operating system) violated security and privacy rights through location tracking in particular.

The companies in both cases have yet to file a response.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, Neither action has been given class-action status by the court and it is too soon to tell how seriously either will be taken, but they highlight the heightened attention online privacy is attracting and possible consequences for misuse of personal data.

When it comes to mobile apps, the privacy commissioners’ guidelines suggest developers assign responsibility to at least one employee to actively develop a privacy policy.