Notification from Google Play about: app collects the Android advertising ID

[appzari]

regards

Yesterday I received the following Notification from Google Play about my app collects the Android advertising ID:

Issue: Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID policy and section 4.8 of the Developer Distribution Agreement

 

Google Play requires developers to provide a valid privacy policy when the app requests or handles sensitive user or device information. We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier, which is subject to a privacy policy requirement. If your app collects the Android advertising ID, you must provide a valid privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console, and from within the app.

I do not know if it is a configuration of the admob Id or in the buil.settings that this infraction is generating.

Anyone know about this topic that can guide me

[rob]

Create a website, for instance: mywebsite.com

Add a page on the website with a URL like:  mywebsite.com/privacy

Find some other developer’s privacy policy page and use it to base your’s on.

Put the URL to your working privacy policy page in the Privacy Policy field in Google Play’s portal for each app.

I believe Google wants a button in the app that you can open up your site’s privacy policy and use something like system.openURL() as your button’s action.

There are places you can get websites for free.

There are sites that will generate privacy policies for you (Google searches are wonderful for finding these)

Getting your own domain name will cost money (about $15 a year) but you can use a hosted blog at wordpress.com or similar and get a domain name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com if you must.

It’s way more professional to have your own site though.

Rob

[appzari]

Thanks Rob,

But Google also gives me the alternative: you can opt-out of this requirement by removing any requests for sensitive permissions or user data.

Finally, I would like to know what is the cause of the ID Provider collection?

.

AppZari

[appzari]

Google Play console says:

We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier

Why does this happen? My app does not have this purpose in any way: therefore I do not know if it is a user permission, build.setting or something from the admob plugin.

[appzari]

@rob

Create a website, for instance: mywebsite.com

Add a page on the website with a URL like:  mywebsite.com/privacy

Find some other developer’s privacy policy page and use it to base your’s on.

Put the URL to your working privacy policy page in the Privacy Policy field in Google Play’s portal for each app.

I believe Google wants a button in the app that you can open up your site’s privacy policy and use something like system.openURL() as your button’s action.

There are places you can get websites for free.

There are sites that will generate privacy policies for you (Google searches are wonderful for finding these)

Getting your own domain name will cost money (about $15 a year) but you can use a hosted blog at wordpress.com or similar and get a domain name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com if you must.

It’s way more professional to have your own site though.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I think this is a bit more complex, since the app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier. Does this come from the Admob Plugin?

[Kevin_H]

Recently got the same notification from Google. The app has no ads, no add providers in build settings, so it was confusing. It does include Flurry, however, so in my case that might have been it? Anyway, easily rectified with a privacy URL on the store. Did not even have to put anything in the app.

[rob]

Ad providers, analytics providers, and many other plugins use this identifier to uniquely identify the user. In the case of ads, for instance, it’s important in their fraud prevention. It is also very useful in allowing the advertisers to show targeted ads, which pay you a higher rate. The AdMob SDK uses the advertiser ID in their SDK. It’s nothing that we can do anything about. It’s your choice if you want to use ads in your app or not.

But if you do, simply create a privacy policy. I do this for my apps even when I’m not using any of these services just to say “I don’t collect any information”. 

Rob

[rob]

Create a website, for instance: mywebsite.com

Add a page on the website with a URL like:  mywebsite.com/privacy

Find some other developer’s privacy policy page and use it to base your’s on.

Put the URL to your working privacy policy page in the Privacy Policy field in Google Play’s portal for each app.

I believe Google wants a button in the app that you can open up your site’s privacy policy and use something like system.openURL() as your button’s action.

There are places you can get websites for free.

There are sites that will generate privacy policies for you (Google searches are wonderful for finding these)

Getting your own domain name will cost money (about $15 a year) but you can use a hosted blog at wordpress.com or similar and get a domain name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com if you must.

It’s way more professional to have your own site though.

Rob

[appzari]

Thanks Rob,

But Google also gives me the alternative: you can opt-out of this requirement by removing any requests for sensitive permissions or user data.

Finally, I would like to know what is the cause of the ID Provider collection?

.

AppZari

[appzari]

Google Play console says:

We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier

Why does this happen? My app does not have this purpose in any way: therefore I do not know if it is a user permission, build.setting or something from the admob plugin.

[appzari]

@rob

Create a website, for instance: mywebsite.com

Add a page on the website with a URL like:  mywebsite.com/privacy

Find some other developer’s privacy policy page and use it to base your’s on.

Put the URL to your working privacy policy page in the Privacy Policy field in Google Play’s portal for each app.

I believe Google wants a button in the app that you can open up your site’s privacy policy and use something like system.openURL() as your button’s action.

There are places you can get websites for free.

There are sites that will generate privacy policies for you (Google searches are wonderful for finding these)

Getting your own domain name will cost money (about $15 a year) but you can use a hosted blog at wordpress.com or similar and get a domain name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com if you must.

It’s way more professional to have your own site though.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I think this is a bit more complex, since the app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier. Does this come from the Admob Plugin?

[Kevin_H]

Recently got the same notification from Google. The app has no ads, no add providers in build settings, so it was confusing. It does include Flurry, however, so in my case that might have been it? Anyway, easily rectified with a privacy URL on the store. Did not even have to put anything in the app.

[rob]

Ad providers, analytics providers, and many other plugins use this identifier to uniquely identify the user. In the case of ads, for instance, it’s important in their fraud prevention. It is also very useful in allowing the advertisers to show targeted ads, which pay you a higher rate. The AdMob SDK uses the advertiser ID in their SDK. It’s nothing that we can do anything about. It’s your choice if you want to use ads in your app or not.

But if you do, simply create a privacy policy. I do this for my apps even when I’m not using any of these services just to say “I don’t collect any information”. 

Rob