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18 February 2011
On 28 January - International Privacy Day - the GSMA published its Mobile Privacy Principles. A product of many months of work by the GSMA and mobile operators, as well as other players in the mobile ecosystem, the principles form the basis for a meaningful, comprehensive approach to privacy, creating consistency in experiences across the mobile ecosystem. This initiative has brought together companies from all parts of the world to create a better experience for the customer, and we look forward to providing our support for the next steps in achieving the Mobile Privacy Initiative’s goals.
Read more about the principles here.
We’ve witnessed and discussed the massive growth in consumers’ mobile world – with new applications proliferating across multiple modes of connectivity via always-on, always-connected devices. And we see the enormous economic and social value these developments play to individuals and to society as a whole. But these developments must be supported by a robust and effective framework for the protection of privacy that will give consumers confidence and trust in mobile applications and services. With this in place, privacy can help safeguard the mobile ecosystem and become an enabler for personal connectivity, identity management and other valuable and necessary online services.
But creating a robust and effective privacy framework can be a challenge in an increasingly fragmented national legal environment that we frustratingly seek to understand and apply to an ecosystem that transcends national boundaries. Or where we confront uncertainty about the roles played or the degree of accountability of the players. Or where consumers cannot expect consistent interfaces that give them transparent information and meaningful privacy choices. Industry initiatives like the MPI have an important role to play in creating the consistency of “privacy outcomes” based upon internationally agreed principles that provide meaningful protection.
We’ll continue to work with the GSMA to build out specific guidance for challenging privacy issues like mobile advertising and analytics, children’s mobile privacy, location-enabled products and services, and to encourage participation by key players in the mobile ecosystem - not just operators, but handset manufacturers, operating system and platform providers and mobile application developers as well.
Read more about Vodafone’s views on the future of privacy:
Rethinking Personal Data: New value through end-user control, transparency and trust
