The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) asks the two tech giants to ensure app providers say how they use consumers’ data.
Background: ICPEN is the organisation grouping together consumer protection authorities across the world (currently, authorities of 61 countries are members). In 2018, ICPEN worked to strengthen consumer protection in the digital economy, calling for improvement in how online businesses present terms and conditions, and finding that information about how apps use personal data is currently insufficient.
The new initiative: This week, 27 regulators within the ICPEN network (including Israel, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway) sent letters to Apple and Google, lamenting a lack of information on apps’ collection and processing of personal data in the respective app stores. At present, consumers have to scroll down significantly and follow links that redirect them to the relevant policies. This, regulators argue, makes comparing apps on these parameters practically impossible.
What is the proposed solution: To address the issue, regulators are demanding that Apple and Google allocate screen space on the main app pages. At the moment, the request of ICPEN members is informal and limited to meetings, so that Apple and Google have the chance to resolve it through an open dialogue; however they note that in many member countries these issues may constitute infringements of national consumer law.
