9.8. Privacy

9.8.1. Usage History

Android stores the history of the user's choices and manages such history by UsageStatsManager.

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-1] MUST keep a reasonable retention period of such user history.
  • [SR] Are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to keep the 14 days retention period as configured by default in the AOSP implementation.

Android stores the system events using the StatsLog identifiers, and manages such history via the StatsManager and the IncidentManager System API.

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-2] MUST only include the fields marked with DEST_AUTOMATIC in the incident report created by the System API class IncidentManager.
  • [C-0-3] MUST not use the system event identifiers to log any other event than what is described in the StatsLog SDK documents. If additional system events are logged, they MAY use a different atom identifier in the range between 100,000 and 200,000.

9.8.2. Recording

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-1] MUST NOT preload or distribute software components out-of-box that send the user‘s private information (e.g. keystrokes, text displayed on the screen) off the device without the user’s consent or clear ongoing notifications.

If device implementations include functionality in the system that captures the contents displayed on the screen and/or records the audio stream played on the device, they:

  • [C-1-1] MUST have an ongoing notification to the user whenever this functionality is enabled and actively capturing/recording.

If device implementations include a component enabled out-of-box, capable of recording ambient audio to infer useful information about user’s context, they:

  • [C-2-1] MUST NOT store in persistent on-device storage or transmit off the device the recorded raw audio or any format that can be converted back into the original audio or a near facsimile, except with explicit user consent.

9.8.3. Connectivity

If device implementations have a USB port with USB peripheral mode support, they:

  • [C-1-1] MUST present a user interface asking for the user's consent before allowing access to the contents of the shared storage over the USB port.

9.8.4. Network Traffic

Device implementations:

  • [C-0-1] MUST preinstall the same root certificates for the system-trusted Certificate Authority (CA) store as provided in the upstream Android Open Source Project.
  • [C-0-2] MUST ship with an empty user root CA store.
  • [C-0-3] MUST display a warning to the user indicating the network traffic may be monitored, when a user root CA is added.

If device traffic is routed through a VPN, device implementations:

  • [C-1-1] MUST display a warning to the user indicating either:
    • That network traffic may be monitored.
    • That network traffic is being routed through the specific VPN application providing the VPN.

If device implementations have a mechanism, enabled out-of-box by default, that routes network data traffic through a proxy server or VPN gateway (for example, preloading a VPN service with android.permission.CONTROL_VPN granted), they:

If device implementations implement a user affordance to toggle on the “always-on VPN” function of a 3rd-party VPN app, they:

  • [C-3-1] MUST disable this user affordance for apps that do not support always-on VPN service in the AndroidManifest.xml file via setting the SERVICE_META_DATA_SUPPORTS_ALWAYS_ON attribute to false.