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California Sues Delta Air Lines Over Mobile Privacy

Posted by timothy on from the best-practices dept.

New submitter mrheckman writes "California is suing Delta Air Lines for violation of California's on-line privacy law. Delta failed to 'conspicuously post a privacy policy within their mobile app that informs users of what personally identifiable information is being collected and what will be done with it' after a 30-day notice. Delta's app collects 'substantial personally identifiable information such as a user's full name, telephone number, email address, frequent flyer account number and pin code, photographs, and geo-location.' Why is it we still can't control what permissions an app has on our phones? It's absurd and disturbing that an app for checking flights and baggage demands all of those permissions."

6 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. you read the set of permissions. by queazocotal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You install or do not install.

    1. Re:you read the set of permissions. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why, though? It is trivial to use (though not to install) utilities like PDroid and DroidWall to control these permissions.

      Why does a modern OS not give advanced users basic control of the sandbox settings? Is it to protect the user's interests, or is it to deliberately limit the user's control of their own device?

    2. Re:you read the set of permissions. by Mitreya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You install or do not install.

      You're thinking of the jungle
      In a civilized society, there are laws that may actually protect consumers. This lawsuit is a demonstration of that
      They should at least make it easy for you to figure out what they collect and what they may do with this information - and they have not.

  2. Kind of silly by Emperor+Shaddam+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have this app on my iPhone. You can use it as a guest, but really its for frequent flyers that already have Delta sky miles accounts. The majority of people using this app have already provided most of the mentioned personal information, if not more because they have a SkyMiles Account and they have bought plane tickets. So this lawsuit is kind of silly in my opinion.

  3. Re:Absurd? No, not really. by dochin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're right on the money. There used to be a feature of the app that allowed you to take a geotagged picture of your car in the parking lot so you could find it later. It's not unreasonable to think that permission was left in after the feature was removed either by mistake or some technical issue with the App Store/iOS apps in general. At least it doesn't spy on my contacts and text messages like many other free apps. I do wish iOS App Store had a feature similar to the google store for android that shows exactly what permissions an app wants when I install it. Even better would be to allow user control over individual permissions.

  4. Re:There is one smartphone that lets you do this.. by avm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is one area where the Blackberry OS has very soundly beaten every other mobile OS I'm aware of. Any OS even remotely considering corporate/enterprise usage really ought to have this sort of ACL for apps.

    But, they don't.