California authorities make mobile privacy rules stricter


The authorities in the US state of California are planning strengthen the privacy laws governing mobile applications.
Under the new regulations, mobile app developers must inform users in advance if they want to gather sensitive information from smartphones and computer tablets.


 California Attorney General Kamala Harris had started discussions with six major companies about having better privacy protections in place, about six months ago.
The discussions led to an agreement in which mobile app developers were required to inform the users in advance if they wanted to collect personal information of users. The mobile app developers are required to inform the users by displaying privacy policies before the services are installed on user devices.
Apple, Google, Amazon. com, Microsoft Corporate, Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard are among the six firms that were holding discussions the Attorney General of the state. "We are assuming everyone is going to cooperate in good faith and not get cute," said Harris.
Harris has not limited her work to the state and is taking her efforts to lawmakers and regulators throughout the country. She wants to point out that the emerging technologies have made it easier to snoop private information of users who store their information on their devices.

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