Security and privacy of mobile platforms and devices, or the lack thereof, has been a major topic in the news in the past few months. There has been litigation brought against almost all of the major players in the market over some form of security and privacy breach or another.

Recently, the Governor General of California met with mobile phone producers, including Microsoft, to develop changes to the Privacy Policies that they will adopt. The major changes are:

1. Any app that uses personal information must have a privacy policy that can be viewed in a marketplace before the app is downloaded.
2. App stores must have an intuitive way for users to report developers that breach policies.
3. Each platform is to provide education to developers on their privacy policies, and obligations regarding the disclosure of the collection of private information, and how it is shared.

This is good news for users of the Windows Mobile platform who are worried about the privacy of their data. While a step in the right direction, it is a small step as this law only applies to California at this time. Hopefully there will be changes like this on a larger scale in the near future. For more information on this change and Windows Mobile phone, please contact us.