Terms and privacy policy: the app's legal starter kit

The legal documents are easy to put off until launch is approaching, and then they’re often thrown together at the last minute. That’s unfortunate, because they’re both a requirement for getting into the stores and a form of protection for whoever is behind the app. Here’s what actually needs to be in place, and why a ready-made template rarely suffices.

The privacy policy must reflect the app’s real data collection

A privacy policy isn’t a formality you copy in. It should describe exactly what your app does with personal data, and that description is unique to your app.

What normally needs to be included:

• What data is collected. Name, email, location, device data, payment information – list what the app actually handles.
• Why it’s collected. Every piece of data should have a purpose, such as creating an account, delivering the service, or improving the app.
• Who it’s shared with. If the app uses an analytics service, a payment provider, or a cloud service, those are third parties that should be named.
• How long it’s kept and how the user can have it deleted.

The point is that the policy should match reality. If you write that the app doesn’t share any data, while it sends data to an external service to measure usage, the policy is both inaccurate and a risk.

The terms’ most important clauses

The terms of service govern the agreement between you and the user. For a consumer service, a few parts matter especially:

• What the service is and isn’t – a clear description reduces unreasonable expectations.
• The user’s obligations – what they may and may not do in the app.
• Limitation of liability – to what extent you’re liable if the service goes down or something goes wrong, within what consumer law allows.
• Payment and termination if the app charges money or has subscriptions.
• Changes to the terms and how the user is informed.

If the app targets consumers, mandatory rules also apply regardless of what the terms say. Terms that try to contract away a consumer’s basic rights don’t hold up, and mostly do harm by creating a false sense of security.

A concrete example

Say you’re launching a fitness app. Users create an account with email, the app logs workouts with location data, and you use a service to see how many people open the app each week. A generic template says nothing about location data or the external analytics service. Your actual app therefore collects more than the policy claims.

The right path is to start from what the app technically does – ideally through a review together with the development team – and then draft the documents based on that. It takes a while but produces documents that actually hold up.

Why templates rarely suffice on their own

A template is written for a hypothetical average app. Your app has its own features, its own data collection, and its own third-party services. The more the app deviates from the generic case – payments, sensitive data, children as users, integrations with other systems – the less a ready-made text fits.

Feel free to use a template as a framework, but fill it with what your app actually does. For apps that handle particularly sensitive data, it’s worth having someone with legal expertise read through the result.

Get the documents in the right order

A practical approach is to start with the technology and end with the legal work, not the other way around. The order that tends to work:

1. Map the data flows. Go through, ideally with the developer, exactly what data the app collects, where it’s stored, and which third-party services are involved.
2. Write the privacy policy against the map. Now you know what actually happens and can describe it accurately, instead of guessing from a template.
3. Draft the terms around the service. Start from what the app offers and what rules it actually needs.
4. Have someone review the whole thing if the app handles payments, sensitive data, or targets children.

The point of this order is that the documents then reflect reality from the start, which is the whole purpose of having them.

Keep the documents alive

An app changes. If you add a new feature that collects more data, or switch a third-party service, the privacy policy may need updating. Documents written at launch and then forgotten risk becoming just as misleading as a ready-made template.

Make it a habit, then, to review the legal documents whenever the app gets significant new features. It’s a small effort compared to having a policy that no longer matches what the app does.

If you’re unsure what data flows your app actually has, that’s a good question to bring to the developer early. Want to talk through the approach? Get in touch and we’ll point you in the right direction.