Your product has a purpose, and that purpose should help you identify the information you actually need. Blindly or willfully grabbing information beyond that can subject your product to bad press, excessive government demands, or even financial penalties. Build trust with your users instead by only collecting information as needed.
MAKE YOUR PRIVACY PRACTICES STAND OUT
The key to developing outstanding privacy practices is to proactively identify and address potential privacy risks before they happen.
By building privacy into your products from the beginning and giving your users the information and tools to protect and control their own personal information, you not only help avoid consequences ranging from scathing media coverage to class action lawsuits, you also make users feel truly invested in your product and build invaluable trust and loyalty.
RESPECT YOUR DATA
Limit and protect the data you collect and retain.
Protecting your users’ privacy requires you to be thoughtful about the data you collect and hold. By carefully considering the costs and benefits of collecting data and by properly safeguarding the information that you do collect, you may prevent privacy harms and increase consumer trust in your product.
IDENTIFY AND COLLECT THE DATA YOU ACTUALLY NEED.
85% of consumers limit how or whether they use a mobile app based on privacy concerns (2012).
RETAIN DATA ONLY AS LONG AS YOU NEED IT.
Just because you need location information to make your service work doesn’t mean you actually need to keep that information. Determine how long you need to keep the data you do collect and delete it once it is no longer necessary to accomplish the purpose for which it was collected. This helps ensure that you’re not retaining information that users don’t expect you to keep and reduces the potential harm of data breach and other privacy hazards.
54% of mobile app users have decided to not install an app when they discovered how much personal information they would need to share in order to use it (2012).