Reasons Why You Should Develop Mobile App as per GDPR

Trying to develop some exclusive mobile app that would be unique in every sense? In search of a mobile application development company in USA? Then, you should always be well-acquainted with the GDPR regulations.

There is rarely a mobile app that doesn’t have some Europeans among its users. After all, over 300 million people live in Europe therefore they are bound to make up some of your market share. The consequences for non-compliance are major. Fines for non-complying with the GDPR are set at 20 million Euros or 4% of the app’s annual profit. That’s huge!

Also, it’s not just about fine. Apps that don’t comply risk are being banned from app stores entirely. Banning apps has happened before, after all. In 2015 Apple pulled hundreds of apps for accessing users’ personal information and Google has banned many apps from the Google Play store for extracting the wrong user information too.

Complying with the GDPR regulations seems pretty scary. Many app professionals are still not sure what they actually have to do. Implementation processes are a lot of effort. The GDPR regulations are new and confusing. No one is certain about what’s going to happen, and the fear about unknown is always prevalent in the scenario.

But, now the question arises, what does it even mean to be GDPR compliant? The main considerations of the act are as follows-

Users must give explicit consent. Businesses can’t rely on ‘presumed consent’ which takes consent as implicit in the fact that someone is using your app. You’ll have to ask for customer consent before you can collect, use or move any customer data.

• Users and authorities must be notified about data breaches. If your customers’ personal data was compromised in any way, you’ll have to let both users and the authorities know about it within 72 hours.

• Businesses are also required to make privacy and data protection as a key focus throughout every project. Access to personal data must be limited to only those who really need it.

• This is not applied to small app developers; but big businesses will always be required to employ a data protection officer (DPO) who is skilled in the management and safeguarding of users’ personal data.

So, what should you do about the same?

Take a look at the amount of user information that you currently gather and make sure you really need it all. Remember that you’re going to have to ask for explicit consent for each data unit, and if anything goes wrong then you’ll need to be able to defend your reasons for accessing that data. So, make life simpler for yourself and cut on the amount of personal information you use in the first place.

1. Getting your users’ explicit consent to every aspect of data usage means that you need to ask for granular consent to every category of personal data that you use or collect. Every data field such as name, location, age range and more must all be listed individually so that users can give or withhold consent for some data categories and not for others. You also need to describe what you will be doing with their personal details, how long you will store them for and whether you will be sharing any data with 3rd parties such as SDKs.

2. Before you start making any changes, check what you’re already doing. Make sure that you don’t embark now on any initiatives that could clash with GDPR and make you non-compliant. Equally, you should examine your current relationships with 3rd parties, including SDKs, to see if the way that you communicate personal data exposes you to GDPR breaches.

3. Part of your responsibility to safeguard your users’ data is to keep it safe from hackers. Industry-grade encryption using strong algorithms makes user data unintelligible to hackers even if they do break into your data storage. If your encryption is good enough then you will never have to report any data breaches because no hacker could ever understand what they’ve stolen.

4. Including a consent form somewhere in the app setup process isn’t quite good enough. You have to ask users for their consent before you begin to collect or store any user data and before they start installing your app. Think of this as the foundation in your relationship with your mobile users. There’s no relationship without consent!

5. You need to give your users the option of changing their mind about the consent they gave at any time, even after you’ve collected their data. That means giving users an easy way to ask about how their data is being used, withdraw consent from any or all categories of personal data and to request that their personal details are deleted permanently.

6. A quick ‘sure’ doesn’t cut it for GDPR. Your users have to actively give consent, meaning that they have to perform some action like checking a box or clicking on a button. Check that the language you use to request consent is clear and unambiguous, since consent also needs to be given freely and with full knowledge. If anything changes about the way that you use your users’ personal information then you need to update your consent requests straight away.

7. You’ll also need to set up ways for users to revoke their consent to just some categories of personal information and not for others, even after they’ve already agreed to it. It’s important to build in functionalities that enable users to change their consent on a granular level.

Panacea Infotech is one of the best mobile application development companies in USA , offering an umbrella of solutions for various platforms such as iOS, Android & Windows.

Over 17 years of experience into various IT domains, I have developed expertise in developing business strategies and management. With an innate ability to achieve results, I believe in creating strategic application to face business challenges.