Data gobbling app lands Delta Air Lines in the dock on privacy charge California's Attorney General has taken an airline to court for not having a mobile app privacy policy, in the first case of its kind. Delta Air Lines' Fly Delta app collected user information including addresses, credit card details and their location, but had no policy on safeguarding this private information. That puts it …
If you buy a ticket from Delta online (is there any other way?) then you already hand over all this information to get the ticket ... sure, you have to click the "I agree" box somewhere but nobody ever reads that ... (see recent El Reg story) - so realistically, what's the big deal with the mobile app? If you log into it with your Delta account then you have presumably already entered all this information and "agreed" ...
So now are we going to get a 53 page "terms and conditions" on mobile devices? With the size of the mobile screen and mandatory font sizes, it's probably going to mean checking that we've read the 420 page T&C...
Frankly, the Delta mobile app is a hell of a lot easier to use then their web site.
I'm 50/50 on this one. Obviously if you're typing that info into an app to book a flight... they're going to have that info and clearly need it to book the flight. By that logic, the privacy policy online applies to the app.
However they do mention taking stuff like GPS location - which technically isn't needed. If they're using it for directions to an airport, for e.g. on Android, an app can pass off navigation to Google Maps with a destination and never needs to know the current location itself.
They'll probably just put a link to the website privacy policy, although I'd be tempted to put it on device, display it all in one for all users except this guy, where it'd be paginated, would force the scrolling of each page with a confirm checkbox and a changing question based on the privacy policy to ensure it's been read at the end, then display it for every flight he books.
True - there's an upside and a downside to sharing information - but the obvious "need" for the data is to show you the flight options from the correct airport. And anyway, as soon as you turn your phone on the phone company knows where you are ... so I think that location is somewhat overblown.
The interesting part is, in some states, cities and counties can also create more restrictive laws than the state. Keep in mind that in the United States, each state is mostly independent on their laws. There are only a handful of laws that are federal, compared to the states, and each state in the USA is roughly the size of an entire country in Europe.
Imagine if European companies had to cater for the whims of France, but not Portugal. Of course complying with the EU privacy directive should be good enough for both countries, and in that way, the EU is probably more centralised than the USA, but most people wouldn't have a problem with the idea that different countries in the EU = different laws.
Delete. App gone from iPhone. Delete. App gone from iPad. Delete. App gone from iTunes.
From the Delta airlines on-board marketing drivel... "Thank you for flying Delta. We recognize you have a choice of airlines...." Yup, I do. And I'll fly with someone else next time.
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