Tech giant, Google has announced that it’s reinstating the app permissions list on the Play Store, after originally removing them, in place of Data Safety labels that were released earlier this month. However, the company didn’t establish when the permission section will be back on the Play Store. Google launched the Data Safety labels on Play Store in April after announcing them last year.
Google Removed its App Permissions List When it Rolled Out Data Safety Label
Moreover, Apple, on the other hand, rolled out its own data privacy labels in 2020 showing what data an app can collect from you. As Google was rolling out the Data Safety label across apps over the last few months, several blogs and researchers reported that Google also removed the permissions section, allowing you to see what kind of data access an app has on your phone, from the Play Store.
Earlier in the month, Google confirmed that it has removed the permissions section from the Play Store on July 13, but did not say for what reason it had been removed. Google said that the app permissions list is being reinstated based on the feed from the Android community, but didn’t elaborate on why it was removed in the first place. Users could still go to the apps menu on their phone and check out permissions for the individual app, but it’s not just reflected on the install page on Google’s app store.
Users Can Easily Understand What Data the Apps Are Accessing
However, the new change will let you see both Data Safety labels and app permissions directly from the Play Store. This suggests that users can easily understand what data an app has access to through the permissions section and why it needs permission to access this data through the Data Safety section.
Notably, Google’s rule that makes it mandatory for developers to declare the Data Safety section for their apps has gone into effect from July 20. The company noted that apps that don’t comply with this rule will be “subject to policy enforcement” — meaning their updates could be blocked.
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