"Data Safety" form for Admob

[Mx77]

The Play Console is soon going to require the completion of a "Data Safety" form for every app on the store.

The code in my own apps doesn't collect any of the user data types mentioned, but some of my apps do include the Admob library (I only display Google ads).

Can you tell me exactly which user data types Admob collects, and what I should enter on the form?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello Mx77,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

With regard to your concern, let me bring this to the rest of the team for additional context. Rest assured that one of my team will reach out to you soon.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2QFp5D:ref

[Ne Xus]

Hello. Any updates?

[Mx77]

No, not heard anything at all.  Shouldn't be too surprised as I honestly can't remember the last time anyone got a useful response to a query on this forum. "We'll get back to you" followed by deathly silence is all that seems to happen.

[FreeLearning]

I also asked a similar question, same result. Having done it 20 days ago, I rerun a short search and came across this: (https://developers.google.com/admob/android/play-data-disclosure) Maybe we'll get answers from there in the future

[Mx77]

Thanks for the link - it seems to have been updated today.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello there,

Sorry for the delay as this Play Store data disclosure page just recently got updated.

Please let me know if you have any questions.


Regards,
Joshua 

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2QFp5D:ref

[FreeLearning]

This question does not seem to have an answer: "Is the user data collected by your app encrypted in transit?", Or maybe I misread

[yohoho...@gmail.com]

I need more detailed info what I need to click for admob. If you can uplaod CSV file for the section it will be great!

[sailend...@gmail.com]

We need the answer to the question: "Is the user data collected by your app encrypted in transit?", like FreeLearning asked above, this is not answered in that official page link you posted, so please let us know the answer to this question.

[FreeLearning]

+1

[Arnd]

+1

Would be great to see more precise declarations.

[Bastiaan]

Dear AdMob,

Could you please provide us with a CSV containing the data safety answers for an app that includes AdMob? So that we can upload that in the data safety form instead of having to somehow extract/interpret the information from the text on your Play Store data disclosure page? That would be a great help for all developers that use AdMob and do not collect any user data themselves. Thanks!

Kind regards,

Bas

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello all,

Thank you all for the follow-up.

Would you please copy and paste the questions here (or upload them as a CSV file) so we can forward them to the corresponding team to take a look?

[FreeLearning]

"Is the user data collected by your app encrypted in transit?"

[Bastiaan]

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

Attached is a data safety form export, of a form that has not been filled out yet (third column, which will contain some booleans when the form is filled out, is entirely empty). There are a lot of entries (>750), but many will remain empty based on previously (un)selected check-boxes. I don't think this export will help you much, it will be much easier if you fill out the actual form in Play Console and export that to CSV file.

Kind regards,

Bas

[yohoho...@gmail.com]

There's an import button in the console. CSV file will help.

[sailend...@gmail.com]

I want to ask everyone here what are you guys answering the question about "encryption"? As there is still no official clean answer about it from AdMob, are you guys still waiting to fill out the form or answered it "yes" or "no"? Someone please let me know.

[FreeLearning]

I haven't filled it in yet, and well time goes by and by and by... and the day will come when it will be mandatory to fill it out. By now I have resigned myself, I think I will say that the data is not encrypted to be sure they will not remove the app.

[markus.w...@gmail.com]

This is so pathetic. Google is forcing us to fill out this form, but apparently Google is unable to provide us with the information about the AdMob SDK needed to do so.

@Google AdMob, please tell us what information is collected by the AdMob SDK and if that information is encrypted in transit. The deadline for the data safety form is approaching.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Markus,

We would recommend checking this document which contains information regarding on what AdMob collects on its users.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2VNNBX:ref

[sailend...@gmail.com]

Hi Teejay,

That "document", which has been mentioned several times in this thread has no info about if the data is "encrypted in transit", and that's what all of us have been asking. So please provide info about encryption.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Sailen,

Thank you for your response.

I've seen that one of our team members (Joshua), already responded on this thread with a requested additional information. What we can recommend for now is to provide also the requested information for them to proceed. In the meantime we ask for your patience here and kindly wait for one of our team to respond with the proper guidance on this.

Regards,

Princess Pamela Pineda Mobile Ads SDK Team

 

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2VNNBX:ref

[Bastiaan]

Hi,

We have been patient for a couple of months already. The question is not that hard. Question 2 of the data privacy form states:

Is all of the user data collected by your app encrypted in transit? Yes/No

So we need to know if the user data collected by you is encrypted in transit.

Thanks,

Bas

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hi Bastiaan,

I understand the urgency of your concern. With this, allow me to flag this to the rest of the team to get their insight as well. I'll update this thread the soonest they provide their feedback.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel Mobile Ads SDK Team

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2VNNBX:ref

[Bastiaan]

Hi,

Yet another week has past. Did the team manage to figure out how their own product works? Is the data that you collect encrypted in transit?

Regards,

Bas

[Allan Stevens]

I'm now getting chaise emails from Google Play to say 'Submit your Data safety form before February' but AdMob can't tell us what to put in the form! Infuriating, especially considering they are the same company! 

[Mx77]

Three months after this question was originally asked and we still haven't been told how to complete this form. The web document mentioned previously is completely inadequate. All it does is list the general types of data that are collected by Admob, but doesn't answer any of the other questions about how the data is processed. If Google doesn't know (or want to admit) what it does with the data, how are us developers meant to know?

As the first deadline is now about to be reached, we have a choice of either guessing (and probably mis-informing our customers), or having the Play Store announce to our customers that we're withholding the information.

Google knows which apps use Admob, and it alone knows what it does with the data, so why doesn't it just complete the form itself automatically?

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello everyone,

We have reached out to the team again regarding what should be answered to the question(s).

We will for sure update this thread once there is an update.

Your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello everyone,

We have reached out to the team again regarding what should be answered to the question(s).

We will for sure update this thread once there is an update.

Your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!


Regards,

Joshua

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2VNNBX:ref

[Andrzej]

any update?

[FreeLearning]

I understand that although a long time has passed and although it is an easy question to ask, it may in some way be difficult to answer.
We only ask for even a small explanation of the procedure you are doing to arrive at an answer, so that we can wait with the knowledge that you are working on it (or not, just say it)

Because at the moment from our point of view it seems like a joke :)

[markus.w...@gmail.com]

It also seems a bit of a joke to me, but in reality it's probably just another example of a mega-corporation shifting responsibility onto small developers. At this point, I doubt we'll get a decent answer.

@Google, why don't *you* just fill in that form?

[FreeLearning]

bump

[Bastiaan]

Dear Google AdMob team,

From a page on your safety center I learned that your company takes data security and user privacy very serious. The page reads: "At Google, we respect and protect your privacy with industry-leading security infrastructure, responsible data practices, and easy-to-use privacy tools that put you in control."

Based on that, I can safely conclude that all of the user data collected by you is encrypted in transit. That is what I will fill in on the data safety form for my apps. 

If you do not encrypt collected user data in transit, please let me know, otherwise I will consider it as a conformation that you do.

Kind regards,

Bastiaan

[Scott Mitchell]

Hiya all,

It surprises me how many people run in to the same problems with Admob and no answers. 

New to this so please correct me.

If we encrypt data before or during transit how is google supposed to decrypt it their end?

If we send encrypted data from device to somewhere and then decrypt it to send to Google it defeats the point of encrypting it in the first place.

The only way I can think of is with a decryption key the other end but have not seen anything like that?

Currently working with unreal blueprints so any complex coding answers are going to go way over my head!

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

Hello all,

We have recently updated the AdMob's Google Play data disclosure page to indicate that all of the user data collected by Google Mobile Ads SDK is encrypted in transit using the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

[Mobile Ads SDK Forum Advisor]

ref:_00D1U1174p._5004Q2VNNBX:ref