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In an effort led by California’s attorney-general, Apple, Google, Microsoft and others have agreed to ask app developers to inform users about data-usage policies before users download their apps.

California’s Office of the Attorney General has received agreements from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Research In Motion (RIM) to improve privacy protections on mobile apps.

Under the agreement, the companies will ask developers to include privacy policies in their apps, so that users will be informed about the data that apps will access and what will be done with this data before they download the apps, the attorney-general’s office told ZDNet Australia‘s sister site CNET.

Basically, California’s Online Privacy Act will now be applied to mobile apps, which currently have no privacy protections.

More details were announced at a news conference by California Attorney-General Kamala Harris:

“This agreement strengthens the privacy protections of California consumers, and of millions of people around the globe who use mobile apps,” she said. “By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used.”

She added that it will also give users a consistent location for an app’s privacy policy on the app-download screen. If developers do not comply with their stated privacy policies, then they can be prosecuted under California’s Unfair Competition Law and/or the False Advertising Law.

The intention is to further commit the app platforms to educating developers about their obligations to “respect consumer privacy” and disclose what type of information they are collecting, how they use it and with whom they share it. Harris said that she’ll meet up with the mobile-application platforms in six months to assess how they’re doing.

This issue of app privacy came to a head last week when Apple announced a change to its developer guidelines — it said that iOS applications that collect users’ contact data break its rules, and that a software fix, coming at an unspecified date, will prohibit this behaviour. This followed the controversy that erupted earlier in the month, when Path — a popular iOS and Android app — was found to be collecting users’ contact information without permission.

Also last week, Twitter admitted that it uploads and stores the contact-list data of many app users for 18 months without an explicit warning.

It’s not just state officials who are taking notice of the data-privacy issue. Just ahead of Apple’s announcement last week, it became known that a subcommittee in the House of Representatives had written to Apple, inquiring as to why it doesn’t force app developers to ask users for permission before downloading users’ contacts.

Via CNET