It was revealed back in February that Google Play sent your personal details to developers whenever you bought their apps on the Play store. It caused a small outcry among the Android community, and Congress even got involved. Google is now finally starting to address these concerns.
Droid Life reports that Google will be updating the Google Wallet commerce site in the coming weeks that will remove any personally identifiable information from transactions. Before the update, all transactions would return a customer’s name, email address and other information. The new Google Wallet only returns the general location of the customer at time of purchase for tax purposes.
So, why did it take Google this long to implement these changes? Google could have just removed the personal information and called it a day, but it seems that the company is completely rebuilding the Google Wallet commerce site to be more developer friendly as well. There’s been a number of UI changes that clean up the site.
Here’s what the new Google Wallet commerce site looks like compared to the old, courtesy of Droid Life:
The Google Wallet fiasco was just one of many privacy challenges that Google is facing. It’s nice to see the company working quickly to address this particular problem, but it has many more to go. In fact, it only just recently settled a years-old Wi-Fi snooping case in Germany. It also has to contend with European regulators as they question Google’s new privacy policy.
