Privacy rating for applications

[SISheogorath]

I think as a platform that aims to become one of the main platform for the linux desktop, including free, open source, and proprietary software we should at least keep up in terms of privacy, maybe even get ahead of other app stores.

The past years have shown that app permissions are one thing, but privacy another. That's why the Apple Appstore added privacy ratings recently. Along with that, FOSS app stores on Android have privacy and anti-feature hints like Aurora or F-Droid.

While apple requires the app developers to provide these ratings/hints, Aurora and F-droid get those from external sources.

I would like to see such a feature as part of flatpak or maybe freedesktop standards in general and by opening this issue, invite everyone to start a discussion about the "how" part. Any ideas?

My current thoughts go into the direction of OARS. But instead of creating an age rating, it could work towards a privacy rating or anti-feature overview.

[mwleeds]

My current thoughts go into the direction of OARS. But instead of creating an age rating, it could work towards a privacy rating or anti-feature overview.

Another option would be to add a field to the appstream spec.

[secretmango]

I would be very happy to have a "proprietary" filter on Flathub. Also a subsection, so users could install the FOSS-only variant of the repo

[Mikenux]

I think the first thing to do is to list what privacy covers in relation to apps. Then we can see if something can be done by creating portals, because listing what user data is collected only by other sources and even by the app itself is not enough. Also note that I don't think it's nice to start listing all the user data that an app wants to collect in app stores, unless it's mandatory (e.g. video streaming apps with a free plan with ads or a small paid plan with ads).

For example, there is telemetry and ads:

• Telemetry. User data is shared, but nothing is received in exchange (i.e. ads). For this, a portal with an interface without any traps seems the best thing. However, this requires that the app does not have network permission.
• Ads. User data is shared and the user receives ads in exchange. This usually requires that the app has access to the network. On the portal side, this means having a system, in addition to data sharing, that will return information to an app without access to the network. Furthermore, we cannot exclude that an app may include ads (including the promotion of other apps) using updates. However, the latter case does not need to share user data.

We also need to consider whether the app has any means other than network access to potentially share user data. For example, an app that has permissions to potentially share user data will not be able to receive a good rating, or even use a privacy portal, regardless of the ratings given by the people holding a repository.