Instead of buying digital goods, we are increasingly exchanging them for our personal information, such as our names, email addresses, browsing preferences, location and much more.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model but the long term viability of it depends on all parties coming together to ensure transparency across the value-exchange.

That’s why MEF has recently launched its Global Privacy Report to investigate levels of awareness as to what user data is captured and whether or not this affects consumer behavior.

The study was far reaching with over 9,500 respondents across ten countries.  What emerged is a fundamental disconnect between the assumptions we as an industry make about consumers and what they actually think.

Freemium content or ad-funded services are based on a simple value exchange: you get a useful app for free or next to nothing and in return the app provider collects your user data to monetize it in some way.  That’s why when you boot up an app you are often met with some form of request about sharing your location or other data.  

For the consumer the request it can appear totally unrelated to the function of the app – for example, why would a spirit level app need to know where you are?

Moreover, consumers are increasingly aware that if they can purchase mobile versions of console games for free or next to nothing (when its console edition costs a hundred times as much) then its likely that something else is going on.

This is the hallmark of the app economy.

Interestingly, the report found that 70 per cent of consumers say  it’s important to them to know exactly what data an app is collecting and what data is being shared.  Nearly half say that it’s very important.  This says very clearly that consumers understand the impact of apps on their privacy and importantly that they want to have some control.   

Secondly, the wake-up call to app developers should be that that only 37 per cent of consumers are comfortable sharing information.  33 per cent are not at all comfortable. That means either 33 per cent of all consumers are avoiding apps because they don’t trust them, or they are happily downloading and using apps unaware that they are sharing their personal information.

Neither of these scenarios is good, but the second is much worse.

It means that at some stage it is likely that there will be a backlash. Consumer trust is a company’s most valuable asset and not easily regained whether or not app providers clean up their act and become more transparent.

Building consumer trust is critical to growing a sustainable business in a market where thousands of apps jostle for space.  As an industry we have a limited window of opportunity to show consumers that we are capable of protecting their privacy by not taking their understanding of it for granted.  We have work to do to bring consumers with us on this journey into this information value-exchange that is equitable to all parties.

Some of the principles of trust are already established at a legislative level with privacy policies becoming mandatory in many territories. What’s missing is how developers and app stores introduce and build the asset of consumer trust into their day-to-day business, taking the practical steps to establish transparency in a consumer-friendly way.

It’s not uncommon for a privacy policy to be reached via a link that takes the consumer out of an app and on to the mobile web, interrupting the user experience.  Some apps also have privacy policies that run to 65 pages and we have to consider if this disclosure is constructed with the consumer in mind and would a consumer really read a lengthy policy in the immediacy of the mobile environment?

App providers don’t have the time to become privacy experts.

They need a simple, cost effective way of building best practice privacy disclosure into their development workflow in a way which puts the consumer at the centre of this process.  Clearly there is a need for tools which provide short form privacy policies that also execute in-app and explain privacy in plain English.

Consumers have told us that privacy is an issue for them and we can ill-afford not to listen.  MEF is working with our members to address this challenge with practical guidelines and new tools through its Global Privacy in Mobile Apps initiative.

Andrew is the global chairman of MEF, trade organisation representing the global mobile content and commerce industry. He is also the chief strategy officer at mobile payments business, mBlox. An industry veteran with more than 17 years experience at the mobile coal-face Andrew has championed countless mobile industry issues. He help found MEF in 2001 to support the mobile industry as it grows in to new geographies and new vertical markets.

Photo Credit: Szift/Flickr

Most of these requests, Google says, are to aid in criminal investigations, though the company says it “can’t always be sure that a request necessarily relates to a criminal investigation.”

Perusing the data on a slow Thanksgiving morning, I noticed that the leading country is not Brazil, which has been in an ongoing fight with Google over content relating to political campaigns. Nor is it one of the more repressive countries like Bahrain, which imprisons bloggers, or Iran, which filters the internet and wants to take its ball and go home, creating its own private internet.

And it’s not Russia, which has expressed a desire to censor the internet and remove porn, drugs, pro-suicide, and extremist content.

Rather, it’s the modern, free speech, Western democracies that mostly lead the charge. And the United States is first in line, accompanied by France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, and Australia in the top ten:

One caveat about the U.S. numbers: they do include requests for information from foreign governments routed through the U.S. government. But Google does not break out the numbers for those requests, so it’s difficult to determine how much of the total they constitute.

As the numbers stand, the U.S. requests Google user data almost four times as much as the next country, India. And its requests are honored more than four times as often.

Google says it is very careful about how and when it complies with requests:

When we receive a request for user information, we review it carefully and only provide information within the scope and authority of the request. We may refuse to produce information or try to narrow the request in some cases … We take user privacy very seriously, and whenever we receive a request we make sure it meets both the letter and spirit of the law before complying. When possible and legal to do so, we notify affected users about requests for user data that may affect them.

But given the fact that there is not a lot of transparency in the transparency report about what kind of criminal investigations are included in Google’s numbers, it’s enough to make one think twice about what kind of information you store in the cloud.

Image credit: Google

“Government surveillance is on the rise,” Google said after it released its sixth transparency report today. The company releases the bi-annual reports in order to keep governments accountable as Internet companies receive more and more requests to hand over or remove data.

Today’s report represents the first half of 2012, beginning in January and ending in June. Google’s first transparency report in 2009 revealed that governments around the world made 12,539 requests for specific users’ data. That number has steadily increased, and today Google announced it received the most requests for user data it has ever seen: 20,938 requests on 34,614 different user accounts.

On top of that, Google says requests to take down data also spiked. Governments made 1,791 requests to remove 17,475 piece of data.

“The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies,” said Senior Policy Analyst Dorothy Chou in a blog post. “Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.”

The company doesn’t let the governments sit in anonymity, however. It provides a list of the countries that submit requests and provides a snapshot of the kinds of data that government tries to take down. You can see these on its annotations page. For example, Google detailed that it received removal requests from 10 new countries, including Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Azerbaijan.

It also doesn’t comply with all of the requests. In the U.S., Google was asked to remove seven YouTube videos “for criticizing local and state government agencies, law enforcement, or public officials.” Google did not take down any of those videos.

Keyhole image via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft’s new service agreement gives the company the ability to share a user’s data with all of its cloud-based services.

The new service agreement change, which the company issued to users in an email Friday, basically throws out the company’s previous policy of letting users choose how their data is used for each service. The change is similar to what Google is already doing with its Google+ initiative, which treats all Google services as if it was one.

So what does this actually mean for users and their privacy? My guess is that most people probably won’t notice much of a difference, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact your privacy rights.

Essentially, this change to the service agreement will mean that Microsoft can now use data from your Outlook/Hotmail, SkyDrive, or Office account and use it in conjunction with other online service like the Bing search engine.

Presumably, this will provide a better usage experience for users because it takes some of the guess-work away from trying to figure out your behavior within each individual service. Microsoft’s official language within the service agreement states that the change will “provide, protect and improve Microsoft products and services.”

Does the idea of Microsoft sharing your data across services bother you? Let us know in the comment section.

Via The Verge

Google chief executive Larry Page appears on PBS show “Charlie Rose” this evening at 11 p.m. local time.

In the show, Page addresses a wide range of topics, starting with today’s surprising news that Chrome is now the most popular browser on the Internet. (“I’m really excited about that.”)

Check out a clip from the show below.

He also wishes Facebook well on its recent initial public offering, while more or less declining to comment on that company’s IPO methodology, which was a traditional, banker-driven IPO as opposed to the ostensibly more open reverse auction used by Google in 2004.

But it’s on the subject of cooperation with Facebook that Page really gets going.

“I think it’s been unfortunate that Facebook has been pretty closed with their data,” Page tells Rose.

By contrast, he says, Google generally stands on the side of openness. For instance, when you join Facebook, you can’t import your contact list from Google. Why not? Here’s Page’s take:

From a user’s perspective, you say … I’m joining Facebook. I want my contacts. In Google, we said, fine. You can get them from Google. And the issue we had is that then Facebook said, no, Google, you can’t do the reverse. And so we just said, well, users don’t understand what they’re doing. They’re putting data in, and they don’t understand they can’t take it out. So we said, well, we’ll only participate with people who have reciprocity. And we’re still waiting.

In other words, Google is willing to share its users’ contact information with Facebook, but only if Facebook is willing to do the reverse.

“You don’t want to be holding your users hostage,” Page says. “We think it’s important that you as users of Google can take your data, and take it out if you need to, or take it somewhere else.”

On other subjects, Page plays the typical, confident CEO. Regarding the company’s ongoing legal battle with Oracle over Java patents in Android, Page says “we feel pretty good about our position.” Regarding antitrust litigation, he’s happy to work with federal officials on “reasonable scrutiny,” given that Google is such a big company. And he’s really excited about those Google glasses.

Quotes courtesy of the “Charlie Rose” show. Click here to find local showings on PBS. The show will also be re-broadcast tomorrow on Bloomberg at 7pm and 10pm.

Image credit: Screenshot from the Charlie Rose show.