Standing room only for MEF privacy workshop at AppsWorld Europe

Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak wasn’t the only draw at last month’s AppsWorld expo in London. More than 60 developers crammed into the Tech World workshop to hear about AppPrivacy – MEF’s free privacy policy generator. MEF Chair Andrew Bud hosted a panel including Martin Fanning, a partner at international law firm Dentons, James Pimentel-Pinto, a founding director of leading UK developer AgencyMobile, and MEF’s Senior Advisor for Policy & Initiatives, Simon Bates, who here summarises the session, which you can watch in full in the video below. MEF has long championed the importance of building …

Australian Government publishes guide to mobile privacy

Simon Bates is MEF’s Senior Advisor for Policy & Initiatives - here he shares his thoughts on a recently published guide to Mobile privacy from the Australian Information Commissioner. Simon and other MEF members are hosting a free privacy workshop on October 23rd at Apps World Europe in London, that will explore best practice for data collection in mobile apps, featuring mobile industry privacy experts and the creators of MEF's online tool - AppPrivacy™. In September, the Australian Information Commissioner published a better practice document for mobile app developers. I know what …

MEF unveils AppPrivacy – the free privacy policy generator for mobile apps

Today MEF launched AppPrivacy™, a free resource for app developers around the world featuring a best practice privacy policy generator, with the goal to build consumer trust. Simon Bates, MEF’s Senior Advisor for Policy & Initiatives, takes us on a tour of its key features, and explores how the online tool is the result of more than a year’s collaboration by MEF's Privacy in Apps Working Group. Why App Privacy? And why now? In previous posts I've stressed the need for app developers to think hard about their use of personal information. Privacy is a hot topic right now in the US, …

NTIA Code for mobile app transparency: an analysis

The NTIA is an agency within the US Dept of Commerce responsible for advising the President on telecoms and IT issues. Last month, it published a Code of Conduct for mobile app developers in an attempt to improve transparency in the collection and use of personal information. MEF’s Senior Adviser for Policy & Initiatives, Simon Bates takes a look at the new Code, and assesses what it will mean for apps and app developers. In June 2012 the NTIA convened a cross section of stakeholders interested in the app economy. This includes privacy, civil liberty and consumer advocates, app developers …

[infographic] More than a quarter of the top 100 free mobile apps don’t have a privacy policy

That's according to the latest MEF research on the relative success of mobile privacy policies which examines when and how a privacy policy was made available, the language used and its word length.Consumer trust also has its own award category at this year’s Meffys, the global awards for mobile content and commerce which will take place in San Francisco on 14th November as part of MEF Global Forum 2013.  The award recognises companies who are paving the way for managing mobile privacy and security in line with regulation and industry developments of best practice. ↓ …