FTC complaint causes app developer to temporarily remove apps

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

If you don't think mobile privacy is becoming a really big deal then maybe this story will catch your attention.

Mobbles, is a geolocation game in which children collect and care for virtual pets. The game also collected some personal information including email addresses without parental consent, and evidently with no privacy policy in place.

The Center for Digital Democracy filed an official complaint with the FTC about the games lack of privacy disclosure, but the developer found out second-hand through media sources, having never been directly alerted of the complaint from the FTC.

The obvious reaction as a developer to such a acquisition is to immediately sustain the distribution of your apps until any such claim can be resolved, which is exactly what the developer decided to do by removing them temporarily from the Apple app store in the Android Play store.

As of today the app has returned to the Android play store with a new privacy policy in place but it has yet to appear back in the Apple app store.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, MAKE SURE you have a privacy policy in place for your app, regardless if it collects information or not.

If you need to generate a default privacy policy go here