Facebook has become the seventh company to sign California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ Joint Statement of Principles, which means that Facebook is on board to officially require app developers to “conspicuously” display privacy policies in apps used by Facebook users.
In a letter to the AG’s office, Facebook’s Erin Egan pointed to the newly released Facebook App Center in saying that they were “guided by the principles contained in the Joint Statement.”
“We are committed to building transparency, control, and accountability into all of our products, and we believe that the App Center empowers users to learn about the policies that will apply to data collected when they use mobile apps included in the Facebook App Center and to make informed choices about which apps they wish to use,” said Egan.
Facebook concluded that they hope the AG will consider them a signatory to the Joint Statement.
Facebook follows Apple, Amazon, Google, HP, Microsoft, and RIM in big-name companies to sign the Statement.
The Joint Statement was drafted as a sort of booster for California’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires commercial sites that collect personal information to post a “conspicuous” privacy policy.
“We are very pleased that Facebook has incorporated the Principles into the design of the App Center and that Facebook requires, as a condition of participating in the App Center, that developers submit a link to a privacy policy,” said AG Harris in a letter to Facebook. “We are also pleased to see that Facebook is prominently displaying the link to an app’s privacy policy in the App Center, and is implementing a means to report and remediate privacy issues.”