Add a better privacy policy

[Aditya94A]

Hey there, great work on this repo! Just a small suggestion, I think we should do away with singlular first person pronouns such as I, my, me. It just seems a bit unprofessional, almost like an informal conversation.

I think simply replacing the phrases with We, our, us etc. will do wonders to making it seem more formal and official (even for individual developers).

[Aditya94A]

Also, I highly doubt that most developers will want to include

This Terms and Conditions page was generated by App Privacy Policy Generator

in their production terms/privacy policy. Nobody would want their users to find out that they took a "shortcut" instead of hiring a real lawyer.

[nisrulz]

@AdityaAnand1

1. I believe the template should be flexible enough to accommodate both cases. For people looking forward to represent themselves as a company or more than one person dev team, would select the appropriate option. Your point is valid, but as per my metric there is a good chunk of people who are using the current version and I do not see myself taking the feature away. I can however experiment with providing an option for indie devs to choose the We,our, us format in the template.
   1. The last line is added just for attribution back to the tool. Under no circumstances it is enforced. The end generated file or copied text is just plain text which can be edited by the developer.

I hope I was able to provide relevant information for your comments, please revert back if you need more information.

Thank you

[vanniktech]

This page is used to inform website visitors regarding my policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if anyone decided to use my Service.

Can we make this configurable in a way that sometimes you show the Privacy Policy in the app and hence the website is unnecessary. Also, we might be able to just remove the word completely as the user knows where he's looking at it.

[Sjeiti]

I love the idea of a 'privacy policy' generator, but currently it feels a more like a 'good starting point' than a 'good solution'. (sorry if I took the issue title too generic, but I'll just list what's on my mind)

• My own app collects no data whatsoever, I'm just obliged by Apple to add a policy. The generator does not really accommodate for that since it refers to data collection on numerous points.
• English is not my native tongue and neither is yours (I see we are neighbors). I see a lot of grammar that is a bit off. I also see some missing capitalisation. It would be great if an English speaker had a good look at all the copy.
• Not everything is an app, or a service. Maybe have a variable subject (app / service / application / game / tool / [custom subject])
• "may use", "may contain", "may employ" looks a bit sloppy. As if the owner does not know what is inside his own app. A lot of paragraphs can be added conditionally by checkboxes or something, ie: "[v] The app has links to other sites."

[Domi04151309]

I agree with the first three points but disagree with the fourth one.

Those expressions are there for legal reasons and assure the app the rights to contain, use or employ things. In short: it's not the "maybe"-may, it's the "is allowed to"-may.

[Sjeiti]

Ok, I get that. I have no problem with the word 'may'. I just thinks some paragraphs should be optional. To illustrate: if I distribute an app that does not contain third party code, I would not state it may be otherwise in my privacy policy.

[nisrulz]

@Sjeiti Have you even tried using the webapp? 🤔

Let me provide your more context:

• When I first built the webapp, I built it for myself and open sourced it. The reason was very simple, I didn't want to pay for something as simple as that. I saw a problem and I fixed it for myself.

• To your point:

  but currently it feels a more like a 'good starting point' than a 'good solution'.

  • The webapp has never posed to provide legal advice. Infact there is disclaimer right on the same screen where you get the final Privacy Policy/ T&C.

• To your point:

  If I distribute an app that does not contain third party code, I would not state it may be otherwise in my privacy policy.

  • The web app handles that. Simply don't select any third party services in the second stage. The data about that is excluded from generated Privacy Policy and T&C.

• To your point:

  My own app collects no data whatsoever, I'm just obliged by Apple to add a policy. The generator does not really accommodate for that since it refers to data collection on numerous points.

  • It does accommodate that! Simply don't enter anything in the "Personally Identifiable Information" field.

    

  • If however you meant in the text, then I think it is a limitation. This was built for Google Play Store first. I am open to improvements on that front.

• To your point:

  Not everything is an app, or a service. Maybe have a variable subject (app / service / application / game / tool / [custom subject])

  • This web app was built to cater to my own problem at that time. I am inherently an Android Engineer. Based on requests from the community, I added "iOS" and "KaiOS" where people literally agreed having just that as an option without any change is fine. This web app is not trying to be a one stop solution. It is in no way near to what GetTerms.io, TermsFeed, iubenda and other paid services offer. They have a legal team employed, their business model revolves around legal advice. I give this out as free. More importantly this is open sourced, if at all there can be anything is either I set aside time to learn all or ins and out of legal advice required or someone from the community helps me out. I am here to review things to the best of my knowledge for what gets shipped. I can't do much more than that. If you or other find it not useful, this web app shouldn't be a choice then. Please refer to paid solutions that can do this. It has worked fine for me when it comes to Android (and for other indie developers who have used it).

• To your point:

  English is not my native tongue and neither is yours (I see we are neighbors). I see a lot of grammar that is a bit off. I also see some missing capitalisation. It would be great if an English speaker had a good look at all the copy.

  • I am always open to PR. Although I have not messed up the template because it is supposed to be a legal document and these usually don't follow exact grammar rules. For example, download any legal document and feed it into Grammarly and observe it highlighting many issues. However that doesn't mean it cannot be improved. By all means we should improve it.

Finally,

I am no lawyer, a normal Android Engineer who dedicates his time to Open source in my spare time. Any and all help is appreciated. I will try to provide as much context/help wherever I can.

[Sjeiti]

I apologize if I offended you. I am just trying to help here (and I have used the app).

When I don't enter any PID into the form, the result still talks about data collection on numerous points.

The third party code bit is my bad. I ran through the app multiple times (because the back button is unaccounted for) and now notice 'Google Play Services' is checked by default.

I appreciate you creating and open-sourcing it. I'll try and see what I can do in terms of PR.

--update--

Looked at it again. And even without any third parties checked the result still mentions third parties in four paragraphs.

[nisrulz]

I appreciate you raising the points. Please don't refrain from putting them across whenever you can. I just think the wording could have been better.

Please open individual issues regarding each point you think we can improve and we can all chime in to see what will be a better solution that works for the wider community😺

Your comments are always welcome and appreciated 😄

[nisrulz]

@Sjeiti Lets create a new issue, where you can point out those instances (3rd party)?

That would help me review the case and see if it can be fixed quickly or requires more work.

Does that work for you?

[Sjeiti]

Cool, sure no problem... I'll create some other separate issues as well now I've had a quick look at the code.