Windows Store Apps – Privacy Policy

by bryanpjohnston

If you are writing apps for Windows 8 and you want to earn money by placing ads in your app, it takes 3 easy steps:

Create an account with the Microsoft Advertising pubCenter. Once you have an account, you can add applications and add units to your account.
Use the Advertising SDK for Windows 8 to add the appropriate adcontrols to your app.
Add a privacy policy to your app in order pass Windows 8 certification requirements.

The third step is not the most obvious and it seems this is a common reason for apps to fail Windows certification (including my own).

Item 4.1.1 of the Windows 8 app certification requirements states:

Your app must have a privacy statement if it is network-capable

In order to place an adcontrol in your app using the Advertising SDK for Windows 8, you must grant your app the Internet (Client) capability in your app’s package manifest. That also means that you need to include a privacy policy with your app. See this blog post for more details.

Create a privacy policy and post it on a web page somewhere (I created my own policy using this template I found online)
Include a link to the privacy policy in your app’s settings charm like so:

//using Windows.UI.ApplicationSettings;
//using System;
//
// Include the following line somewhere such as the constructor
// of the main class that runs your app.
SettingsPane.GetForCurrentView().CommandsRequested += ShowPrivacyPolicy;

// Method to add privacy policy to settings charm
private void ShowPrivacyPolicy(SettingsPane sender, SettingsPaneCommandsRequestedEventArgs args)
{
SettingsCommand privacyPolicyCommand = new SettingsCommand(“privacyPolicy”,”Privacy Policy”, (uiCommand) => { LaunchPrivacyPolicyUrl(); });
args.Request.ApplicationCommands.Add(privacyPolicyCommand);
}

// Method to launch privacy policy url
async void LaunchPrivacyPolicyUrl()
{
Uri privacyPolicyUrl = new Uri(“http://www.yoursite.com/privacypolicy”);
var result = await Windows.System.Launcher.LaunchUriAsync(privacyPolicyUrl);
}

bryanpjohnston