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California Sues Delta Air Lines Over Mobile Privacy
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."
Oh, wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
This lawsuit is nothing but more pointless grandstanding by an attorney general. Privacy policies are pointless and may actually be counterproductive; they're written by lawyers for no one and typically simply say "we can do whatever we want with the information we get from you", because the requirement to have a policy doesn't provide any restrictions on what that policy says.
Nevertheless, "for your privacy" is right behind "for the children" and "for your safety" as a rationale to shut down legitimate objections, and surely California doesn't have anything better to do to protect citizens' privacy; after all, it only lost two SSN databases this year!