InfoBytes Blog
California AG Notifies Mobile Application Developers of Non-Compliance
On October 30, California Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris announced that her office’s Privacy Enforcement and Protection Unit sent letters to numerous mobile application developers advising those entities of their noncompliance with state privacy law. Specifically, the AG alleges that the targeted mobile application developers failed to post a privacy policy that is reasonably accessible to the consumer, as required by the California Online Privacy Protection Act. Under the state unfair competition law, violation of the Act may result in penalties of up to $2,500 per violation. A violation in this instance is each download of a mobile application that does not properly include a privacy policy. The letters provide thirty-day notice of noncompliance as required by the Act, within which each developer must provide specific plans and a timeline for compliance, or an explanation of why the application is not covered by the Act.