Developers Now Required to Share Phone Number and Address on EU App Store
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
Wouldn’t a PO Box be a better option? They run as little as $10/mo for one at the USPS.
Otherwise you are required to give your personal address.
See e.g. https://dev.to/svprdga/privacy-nightmare-as-google-plans-to-... but there are plenty of other sources that match my experience.
These were both accepted by Apple and published in the EU.
If you don't process any personal information, don't have ads or purchases and don't have online backend services... Then you might have a chance of arguing you're not a business. But that's probably so few apps it's worth it to just require everyone to follow the same rules.
This is simply not true. I've read the regulations, because I had to declare trader status myself.
Most places do not accept a PO Box which is why most use a Registered Agent service.
I learned this from a friend who was under witness protection, so it was a necessity for him.
I'm using it mostly to keep the usual spam away from my mailbox.
Google Play also requires it if you're just publishing as an individual for free. I made my account back in 2010 and the last update was in 2011, and let it get restricted earlier this year because I didn't want to publicize that information.
I'm letting my account lapse in November when this falls due for me - no way in heck I'd be putting these details out there.
No great loss for google or the world, but still smarts a bit given the hours I've put in to them over the years.
I didn’t realize that they meant “share with the public on the store”. That seems pretty awful (I understand the intent, but I think such a law is geared towards actual businesses rather than hobby/side gig level devs).
I think this is one of those things where having a mechanism to directly contact the developer does make sense (as this is clearly intended as a mechanism to serve legal docs so often requires physical address), but given for many people this is their home address not a business address that seems super unsafe.
I don’t know what the PO Box situation is like in the EU either, but I know in some places in the US there’s a waiting list.
To me I think that maybe the safer solution here would be for the appropriate EU agency to allow smaller devs to register their home address and have that act as an intermediary to avoid just have their home address being public, while also having people be sure that there is a real and accurate contact address.
On the other hand I would have assumed that was covered by standard business registration?
Desktop OSes don't have anything parallel, so yeah, you need the browser running. But nothing has to be on screen.
What does that mean?
It would be nice to turn the tables and have some of these giant companies disclose their entire complicated tax avoidance structures to public scrutiny.
Anyway I quit smart phones a year back, and would ask fellows developers to still consider working on 'normal' websites before the world is totally controlled by these closed garden ecosystems.
And also about the fact that if anyone wants to offer their app on the web, they have literally no choice but to write software using that stack.
Many times the choice between "use web-stack" and "use proper UI framework" boils down to acceptability of slower and more painful distribution process. With web apps there is virtually no distribution process – users download app every time they want to use (because, of course, it makes sense, right?). But with other solutions, there is some sort of distribution process – like Apple/Google App Store or app repositories. Which makes app distribution more secure and efficient, but adds some pain to the process. If you want to reach as many users as possible, you need web, and that's how we all got locked in into writing apps using typesetting engine and pretending that it's okay.
If you want to offer your app on Android, you have literally no choice but to use Android Studio. Is that really better? At least it’s possible to write HTML on an old computer without running out of RAM.
As for address, no workaround yet.
We all thank the bureaucrats in Bruxelles for this nonsense