Last year, the U.S. government hosted multi-stakeholder talks to forge common ground on mobile app privacy. The result was the Mobile App Privacy Voluntary Code of Conduct, which calls for mobile applications to include a short form privacy notice — simple, easily understandable screens — that clearly inform consumers what data is being collected and with whom the data is shared. The screens supplement traditional privacy policies by summarizing important information in a consumer-friendly design.
Intuit took great care to design and develop a mobile privacy notice that complies with the Code of Conduct, releasing it into Intuit QuickBooks Online mobile apps hosted under TRUSTe’s Privacy Seal program.
Today, with the help of the Application Developers Alliance, we are making our mobile privacy notice available to the developer community via an open source code. It is available under the MIT open source license.
The open source code allows any web-based mobile app to easily implement innovative, at-a-glance privacy screens that comply with the Code of Conduct and answer two important questions for users: what type of data does this app collect and what types of third party companies does this app share that data with, if any.
We announced plans back in March to make our mobile privacy notice available on open source in partnership with the Application Developers Alliance. Since then, we have vigorously tested the mobile privacy notice with the help of TRUSTe, which hosted the short-form notice in its testing phases. We laid the groundwork to bring the tool to the broader developer community, which includes 30,000 mobile app developers who work with the Application Developers Alliance.
The open-source software code includes JavaScript and CSS, supporting mobile web applications, including those on the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms.
We know a number of our IPP developers have mobile apps that are a part of their overall SaaS offering for small businesses and accountants. Our hope is that now you won’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to mobile data transparency. We invite you to innovate on top of our template to create a mobile privacy notice that suits your applications and hope you find this useful!
The open source code for the mobile privacy notice is available on GitHub and DevsBuilt.IT, an app industry search engine powered by the Apps Alliance.
For more information, please visit the following links:
- Apps Alliance and Intuit Partner to Release New App Privacy Tool
- Mobile Privacy Notice FAQ
- TRUSTe blog post
- NTIA blog post
Happy coding!
Lori Fraleigh
Director, Developer Relations
Intuit Partner Platform
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