Apple and Google Are Drawing the Line on App Privacy

Here’s what developers need to know about plans to reshape app store standards and put user trust first

Image: jcomp on Freepik

“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed. Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.” — Apple CEO, Tim Cook, Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference, January 2021

The state of global privacy laws

Global privacy legislation is undoubtedly on the rise. In the past decade, more than 60 countries passed new privacy laws. Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, New Zealand, India, and South Africa have passed GDPR-like regulations since GDPR became law in Europe, in May 2018. Even China recently introduced new sweeping privacy laws.

These developments are partly fuelled by governments and regulators recognising that consumer rights and human rights are at risk in the age of surveillance capitalism and, in some cases (like China), by national security concerns. But not all countries have settled on what the future of privacy…