Generate Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions for mobile app in 5 minutes
Legal matters can make sad even the most sober-minded developer. Especially when it comes to crafting documents, on which corporations, like Google or Facebook, spend thousands of man-hours.
But no worries, to each problem, there should be a solution on GitHub. And there is a great project call App Privacy Policy Generator created and open-sourced by Nishant Srivastava, which solves exactly this problem.
In the article, I'll show you how I generated and hosted Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions documents for my open-source app Codeforces WatchR in 3 simple steps and about 5 minutes of my time.
Step 1: App information
Generator supports 3 mobile OSs — Android, iOS and KaiOS, and 5 app types — free, open source, freemium, ad supported, commercial. If your combination is missing, you can complement generated docs at the end.
Additional app information includes:
- app name (no need to include SEO words from Google Play / App Store)
- contact information (will be public)
- personal data your app collects
- owner type (individual or company) and its name
- policy effective date (today by default)
Step 2: 3rd party services
If your app is a small one, rather of all you don't collect a lot of (if any) data about your users. But 3rd parties, which you integrate, is another story. It's important to let your users know about potential risks to their privacy.
App Privacy Policy Generator allows you to choose from the list of 25 popular options, which includes different Google, Facebook, and other services. Again, if anything is missing, you can simply add it in generated documents.
Step 3: Check and deploy
Voilà! Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions for your application are ready, and can be downloaded as Markdown, HTML, copy/pasted to Google Doc, deployed to Flycricket, or anywhere you want.
Don't be mislead by the simplicity of the process, you still need to proof-read generated documents, and make sure that it well corresponds to how your app handles user data.
For Codeforces WatchR, I’ve chosen to keep documents in Google Doc for its simplicity and flexibility, which you check here and here. Each document takes about 3 pages of text, so it won’t take too much time ;)
Bottom line
There is no need to hire legal staff for your pet or open-source project to comply with Google Play and App Store rules. If you don't abuse your users trust and violates their privacy, of course.
But if you do, just do not ;) FAANG?
