Facebook announces new privacy principles for developers of apps.
October 28, 2009
Here are Facebook’s revised privacy principles for app developers. They make some very good points,and many apps are going to have to do some work to comply – many apps dont even have a privac policy, something now required to be easily available.
Keeping on top of the million developers globally is going to be quite a task. Everyone in the eco-system will need to help!
Principles
- Be trustworthy
- Respect privacy
- Don’t mislead or surprise users
- Don’t spam – encourage authentic communications
- Create a great user experience
- Build social and engaging applications
- Give users choice and control
- Help users share expressive and relevant content
Policies
- Presenting Your Policies
- You must provide a link to your privacy policy and any other applicable policies in the Info section of your application’s Profile page and on every page of your application.
- Features and Functionality
- You must not confuse, mislead, surprise, or defraud anyone.
- You must not violate any law or the rights of any individual or entity, and must not expose Facebook or Facebook users to harm or legal liability as determined by us in our sole discretion.
- You must not use a user’s session key to make an API call on behalf of another user.
- You must not include functionality that proxies, requests or collects Facebook usernames or passwords.
- You must not circumvent our intended limitations on core Facebook features. For example:
- You must not notify a user that someone has removed the user as a friend.
- You must not track visits to a user’s profile, or estimate the number of such visits, whether aggregated anonymously or identified individually.
- You must not significantly alter the purpose of your application such that users would view it as entirely unfamiliar or different.
- To change the name of your application, you must use one of the following formats for 30 days before completely switching to your new application name: “New name (formerly ‘old name’)” or “New name (renamed).” For example, “App 2 (formerly App 1)” or “App 2 (renamed).”
- Storing and Using Data You Receive From Us
- You must not store or cache any data you receive from us for more than 24 hours unless doing so is permitted by the offline exception, or that data is explicitly designated as Storable Data.
- You must not give data you receive from us to any third party, including ad networks.
- You must not use user data you receive from us or collect through running an ad, including information you derive from your targeting criteria, for any purpose off of Facebook, without user consent.
- Unless authorized by us, your ads must not display user data – such as users’ names or profile photos – whether that data was obtained from us or otherwise.
- You cannot convert user data you receive from us into Independent Data (e.g., by pre-filling user information with data obtained from the API and then asking the user to save the data).
- Before making use of user data that may be protected by intellectual property rights (e.g., photos, videos), you must obtain permission from those who provided that data to us.
- You must not give your secret key to another party, unless that party is an agent acting on your behalf as an operator of your application, but you must never give your secret key to an ad network. You are responsible for all activities that occur under your account identifiers.
Published:
Last Updated: August 31, 2020