App Developers Press Ohlhausen on COPPA Compliance, Consumer Education
The FTC can help mobile app privacy by boosting consumer education and industry guidelines, app developers told Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen during a Google Hangout hosted Wednesday by the Application Developers Alliance. Developers said during the Q&A with small app developers that truly effective privacy policies will come only with high consumer demand and clear signals from the FTC.
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"I don’t have an incentive to implement really simple privacy policies because the users aren’t really asking for it,” said Ariel Michaeli, CEO of appFigures, which designs a reporting platform for mobile app developers. “We're starting to see that market response,” Ohlhausen said, pointing to messaging from Apple in its recent iPhone 6 and iOS 8 rollout.
Developers said there’s an industry desire to self-regulate privacy, but the FTC could do more to encourage its development. Michaeli asked about the FTC’s consumer education role. “We're a big believer in consumer education,” Ohlhausen said. “Maybe [consumers] need to know more about what privacy choices they're making in the market.”
"I personally don’t believe self-regulation works absent an incentive,” AssertID President Keith Dennis told us in a follow-up interview. AssertID provides services to verify parental consent for mobile apps and websites. Self-regulation is a “nice thought,” Dennis said, but no guarantee. He agreed with Ohlhausen that the market shows an “emerging trend” of competing on privacy. “I think the elevation of privacy to competitive advantage has a chance of providing that incentive,” he said.
Messaging on privacy from the FTC is not always clear, app developers said. “It’s hard for [app developers] to understand what the right thing is to do,” said Damien Patton, CEO of event detector app developer Banjo. “If you got to the FTC, it’s not an easy or clear message.” Ohlhausen pointed to some business-oriented guidelines on the agency’s website (http://1.usa.gov/1uoGhLr). Granular details can be difficult, she said. “As technology changes, as expectations change, promises change and there is necessarily going to have to be some evolution on what that means at any given time.”
Ohlhausen also plugged FTC-certified safe harbors as resources for mobile app developers. “That can be an easy way for app developers or others to make sure they're complying with COPPA,” she said. Following an update of the COPPA rules in July 2013 to address mobile app privacy, industry has diverged on what role safe harbors should play in ensuring developers their products are COPPA-compliant (CD Aug 28 p7). “I wouldn’t call it a one-stop-shop,” Ohlhausen cautioned.
In its first public COPPA enforcement action since the updated rules, the FTC targeted two mobile apps’ age verification systems. Developers expressed confusion Wednesday over exactly how COPPA maps onto these age-gate systems. Nina Kranjec, legal counsel for children’s app developer Outfit7, wondered if app developers could rely on using a social network’s age gate in lieu of designing their own. “We sometimes struggle with finding the right balance,” she said, between meeting COPPA requirements and providing a quality consumer experience.
Other app developers raised broader COPPA questions. Dan Nelson, CEO of children’s identity verification company KPass, asked about children-targeted services wanting to use third-party products such as an embedded YouTube player. Ohlhausen said the FTC staff was a great resource for specific technical questions, but stressed the main goal of COPPA -- that parents must have control. The FTC isn’t saying “that children should be using this or shouldn’t be using this,” she said. “What we're saying is that should really be in the parents hands.”
Wednesday’s chat was Olhausen’s third direct conversation with app developers in the past year. She previously hosted chats on reddit (CD Nov 4 p12) and Twitter (CD Jan 7 p4).