Sen. Al Franken calls for app privacy policies

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is pressing Apple and Google to require all apps made for iPhones, Androids and other devices to have privacy policies that detail when those games and other tools track a user’s location and why.

Sen Franken expressed concern that neither tech company has such a rule in place, even though they maintain the largest clearinghouses of smartphone apps, according to a letter Sen Franken sent to both companies’ CEOs. “Requiring that each app in your stores have a clear, understandable privacy policy would not resolve most of the privacy concerns in the mobile market,” wrote Sen Franken, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s new privacy panel. “But it would be a simple first step that would provide users, privacy advocates and federal consumer protection authorities a minimum of information about what information an app will access and how that app will share that information with third parties,” he added.