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Google recently published a change inside of the google developer console ...

...stating that now every app must have a privacy policy.

What does this new mandatory change mean for developers? Do we have to aquire formal legal documents from lawyers or is a simple write up such as "xyz/nothing is being collected" enough ?

Secondly what if you create an app that does not collect any data at all, is a privacy policy still necessary ?

Solar Mike
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StellarEquilibrium
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  • https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/272165/are-developer-centric-questions-about-application-stores-on-topic – CommonsWare Jul 28 '21 at 21:38
  • Btw just as an update, that question is completely off topic and did not help me in any way, but of course SF as always pretending to be a real office, agrees silentely. – StellarEquilibrium Aug 05 '21 at 15:07

1 Answers1

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Yes, you must have a Privacy Policy, even if all it says is:

FizzBuzz(TM) does not collect any data.

You do not generally need a lawyer (says the non-laywer) to write a Privacy Policy, as long as your PP is accurate about what it collects (or doesn't collect). If your PP is inaccurate Google will blacklist your app, at least until you can convince a living Google employee that your PP has been sufficiently updated.

Dúthomhas
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  • Thank you. Even though I had to do some digging myself back when I wrote this question, it still angers me that the question got thrown into the bin of "off-topic", deleted and unanswerable questions, even though this is a legitimate, not asked, extremely important question that literally affects every android developer! But then again, almost every app breaks either PP or Google Guideline. The entire playstore is a giant scam&spam pool where the honest-by-the-book (here guideline) dev gets squashed in the ocean of apps that dont follow the guidelines and steal screen realestate. – StellarEquilibrium Aug 26 '21 at 23:26