This article explains how to easily create a privacy policy for your app. A privacy policy is required to publish your app to the app stores. The policy that you will create via the steps in this article will have to be hosted on either your own, your company's, or your client's website, depending on the person or entity for which the app is intended.
To make things as easy as possible, we'll be using an online privacy policy generator to create the privacy policy required for your app. There are many great privacy policy tools available when searching the web, but for this article we'll be using the generator which is available via the following page: https://app-privacy-policy-generator.firebaseapp.com/
Alright, let's get started!
- Open the page: https://app-privacy-policy-generator.firebaseapp.com/
- The page will open up displaying the following:
The App Name will logically have to be entered with the app store title of your app. This is the app name that you've entered within the App Vitals section of your app in AppMachine.
In the Contact Information field, enter the email address that app (store) users can send questions to regarding the app's privacy practises.
Within the Personally Identifiable Information field, enter any information that is requested by the app, whether required or optional, that can be directly linked to the app user's identity. Enter this information comma separated. For example: First name, Last name, Address, Email address, Phone number, (etc..)
Please note that if you have enabled User Authentication for your app, that the users' first name, last name, and email address are requested during the account registration process. In that case you will have to enter at least these three values in the Personally Identifiable Information field.
Set the App Type to either Free or Commercial, depending on whether your app is published in the app stores as a free or paid app.
Set the Mobile OS option to Android & iOS.
Set the Policy Effective Date to either the current date, or a date in the past if your app is already live in the app stores.
Set the Owner Type to either Individual or Company, depending on whom the app is created for. After selecting the owner type a new field will appear in which you'll either have to enter the Developer Name or the Company Name depending on the owner type you've selected.
Enter the requested information and use the 'next' arrow below the image to continue.
On the next page you'll be able to select the Third Party Services that are included in your app. If you have enabled Google Analytics for Firebase when creating the Firebase project for your app (or if you're planning to enable this when doing so), then select this option.
The other third party services mentioned in this list are not part of any standard modules available in the AppMachine platform. However, if you've connected to any other services via for example a web service block, then select the matching services from the list.
When you've selected all the services, use the 'next' arrow to continue.
On the last page you'll be able to view the Privacy Policy of your app via the similarly named button. You can either copy the text into a document of your own to host online, or use the HTML or Markdown button to copy the text in a format suitable to paste on a page of your website.
When you've either created a privacy policy document and hosted it on your website, or created a dedicated privacy policy page on your website, copy the URL of the webpage on which your privacy policy is available and add it to the iOS and Android publish information of your app in AppMachine.
Congratulations, you've now successfully created a privacy policy for your app!