When Apple finds that an app misuses customer data, the company gives the developer 24 hours to fix the problem or be removed from the App Store, Novelli said. Google provides parental controls to protect children and requires power balance developers to rate the maturity level of apps offered in the Android market, Davidson said.'The location information sent to Google servers when users opt in to location services on Android is anonymized and stored in the aggregate," Davidson said. "It's not tied or traceable to a specific user."Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor told lawmakers that the Palo Alto company has "robust privacy protections." If customers "lose trust in a service like Facebook, they will stop using it," he said.Taylor said that mobile technology "will play an increasingly important role" in how people use Facebook, the world's largest social networking site. The company is "testing a new policy that communicates about privacy in a simple, interactive way," according to his testimony.Catherine Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs for Cupertino-based Apple, told lawmakers Thursday that the company doesn't knowingly collect any information on children under age 13.All location data gathered by Apple from iPhones and iPad tablet computers is anonymous and can't be traced to individual users, Novelli said. The information is used to improve the shop online 2011functionality of the devices.In its testimony, Google defended its handling of user data tied to mobile devices using its Android software, telling lawmakers that the company seeks consent for the collection and use of location information."Google is also very careful about how we use and store the data that is generated by these services," Alan Davidson, the Mountain View company's director of public policy, said in his testimony.Rockefeller said Wednesday that he sent letters to Apple and Google asking them whether applications that run on their mobile platforms comply with online privacy laws for children.U.S. lawmakers, considering legislation aimed at protecting consumers' online privacy, said the market for smart-phone applications needs to be regulated to prevent the inappropriate sharing of user data.As mobile devices "become more powerful, more personal information is being concentrated in one place," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said Thursday during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing in Washington on mobile privacy. "These devices are not really phones - they are miniature computers.""The mobile marketplace is so new and technology is moving so quickly that many consumers do not understand the privacy implications of their actions," Rockefeller, who chairs the Commerce Committee, said in remarks before the subcommittee hearing.Apple, Google and Facebook, along with the thousands of developers who make applications for their platforms, are facing increasing power balancescrutiny from Congress over how they collect, use and store customer information, including data gathered from smart phones and other wireless devices. Executives from the three companies appeared before the panel Thursday.
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