Is my app or its dependencies violating the Android Advertising Id policy?

Question

Disable advertising id collection

According to the Firebase docs you can disable advertising id collection by setting:

<meta-data android:name="google_analytics_adid_collection_enabled" android:value="false" />

in your AndroidManifest.xml under the <Application> tag.

EDIT: It seems like people are having mixed success with this approach. Try adding configurations { all*.exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-core' all*.exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-iid' } to the Gradle app dependencies area as per comment below.

Today many developers are getting this same issue. I also got this issue. I didn't collect any sensitive data, I am not even showing ads to my users. In your case the Crashlytics lib could be an issue. It deals with advertising IDs. In the mail they mention the required action:

Action required: Add a privacy policy to your store listing and app

So I think all of us should add a privacy policy on the store listing as well as on the app. Before taking the action we should go through the related privacy policy. Here are some links from where you can get help:

Privacy policy to upload an app

Usage of Android Advertising ID

Developer Distribution Agreement

Developer Program Policies

You are using crashlytics below 2.9.3. Apparently it's collecting and sending the google advertising id as a key in their header. That might be the or one of the issues. You can check if it's sending the advertising id through a proxy like Charles.

Edit *** It seems that version 2.9.3 and above are still getting the advertisingID from by calling AdvertisingIdClient.getAdvertisingIdInfo() from the com.google.android.gms.ads.identifier package. I checked it by setting a break point on the method. I am assuming it is somehow still being send to fabric. Which would mean updating to higher version will not solve it..

For Unity users, the problem is in Unity Analytics.

To resolve this problem, we need to do 2 tasks:

• In Google Play Console, add the link: https://unity3d.com/legal/privacy-policy into Privacy Policy field in Store presence / Store listing
• In your app, add a Privacy Policy button by using the Unity's own plugin Unity Data Privacy Plug-in: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/add-ons/services/unity-data-privacy-plug-in-118922

After resubmitted about some minutes, Google Play approved my app.

I am not using Crashlytics or any other thing. Just a simple offline app with Facebook Ads. Still my app was removed from the Play Store.

Issue: Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID policy and section 4.8 of the Developer Distribution Agreement

Issue Description: Google Play requires developers to provide a valid privacy policy when the app requests or handles sensitive user or device information. We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier, which is subject to a privacy policy requirement. If your app collects the Android advertising ID, you must provide a valid privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console, and from within the app.

Solution:

1. I created a Privacy Policy for my app using this link and edited it according to my app.

2. I created a url for my privacy policy using this link.

3. Log in to Google Play Console and Go to the Store presence and then store listing and paste your url in Privacy Policy section.

4. Submit your update.

Note - In my case I did not have to submit any new build with privacy policy as mentioned in mail and my app was visible in play store within hours I did the steps I mentioned above. If in case your app is not visible in play store after following the above points then you should put one privacy policy section in your app too and submit a new build.

I also recieved the same message and got some of my apps suspended today.

So i just deleted those three firebase dependencies:

compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-core:10.0.1'
compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ads:10.0.1'
compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-appindexing:10.0.1'

Then, i re-submitted the apps, and they was accepted after review :)

If your app uses Firebase SDKs like analytics and all, you can disable Advertising ID collection on SDK level by putting the following line in your AndroidManifest.xml file under the Application tag.

<meta-data android:name="google_analytics_adid_collection_enabled" android:value="false" />

You can read more about it here.

My app was not even an ad supported application but still it got hit by this section 4.8 clause. By employing the above technique I was able to get it back on Google Play without submitting any privacy policy.