Hasta La Creative!

With the Federal Trade Commission and the State of California breathing down the necks of mobile app makers, mobile app privacy is a growing concern. A small video game industry privacy group, the Entertainment Software Rating Board aims to fill the mobile app privacy gap by unveiling a privacy certification program for mobile apps today.

Privacy is an issue particularly when it comes to apps made for kids. The FTC last year updated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to require more transparency on data collection by mobile-industry players, and conducted a study that found nearly 60% of the apps aimed at kids it studied sent device identification data to app developers or third parties such as ad networks and analytics, a sign of how pervasive mobile-data collection has become. The COPPA update defines mobile device IDs as personal information.

“We were doing lot of the things that were already in the amended [COPPA] rule, however translating that to mobile is a challenge and the biggest challenge is probably parental consent,” said Dona Fraser, VP of the ESRB Privacy Certified program.

Continue reading at AdAge.com