FTC Staff Releases Report on Mobile Application Privacy Disclosures

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) recently released a staff report entitled Mobile Privacy Disclosures - Building Trust Through Transparency (the Report), which advises critical players in the mobile application industry of best practices to help inform consumers of how their personal information is collected, used and shared by mobile platform providers (such as Amazon, Apple and Google) and application developers. The Report encourages companies in the mobile ecosystem to "work expeditiously to implement the recommendations in this report," while explaining that, "[t]o the extent [its] guidance goes beyond existing legal requirements, it is not intended to serve as a template for law enforcement actions or regulations under laws currently enforced by the FTC."