Date safety: is data collected and not shared or data collected and shared when using Google Admob / Firebase?
For example I use Firebase Crashlytics in my apps and I need to set that my apps collect crash logs.
I have two options (Collected and Shared) there but which one should I choose or both?
Also If I choose Collected option then I have additional questions like:
Yes, this collected data is processed ephemerally
No, this collected data is not processed ephemerally
But I have no idea how Firebase stores the data, it's not my own server.
So it seems I should choose Collected option, just Shared, correct?
If I select Collected and not Shared then I see the following preview of Data Safety before submitting it:
The developer says this app doesn’t share user data with other companies or organizations
But what about Google company?
Update:
My app doesn't have authorization and doesn't have any my own servers to connect expect using third-party libraries like Google Admob, Firebase (default Analytics without custom events, Crashlytics, Remote Config, FCM/Messaging) which connect to their own servers and so on.
So If I use such libraries then my app collects (or shares, or both, unknown) the following data:
- Approximate location (Admob? UMP SDK? Firebase Remote Config? Firebase Analytics?)
- Crash logs (CrashLytics), Diagnostics (Admob?)
- App interactions (Admob? Firebase In-App Messaging? Firebase Analytics? CrashLytics?)
- Device or other IDs (Admob and I guess each Firebase service we use uses it)
So for example the following data are used for the Admob/Firebase (third-party) libs and I should specify that this data "Collected" or "Shared" or both, how should I answer it for each data in Data Safety section on Google Play Console website?
I found the following link https://github.com/Privado-Inc/SDK-Privacy-Report/blob/main/Android%20App%20-%20SDK%20Privacy%20Report.csv
Many Google (Admob/Firebase) libraries there marked as both "Collected" and "Shared". Is it correct? Should I do the same for my app, set both like in the specified table?
Also I checked the official docs but it's confusing:
So it's unclear, it just says that if we use third-party libs then the data is collected and shared in both cases anyway. Or what do they mean?
How can I even know what Google/Firebase libs share or not?
Then I decided to check official Google app - YouTube which definitely uses Admob (ads in videos) and some data should be shared I believe between advertisement partners of Admob but then I found that they specified that they only collect the data and don't share it:
Why so?
It just drives me crazy.
I know that actually many developers don't really fill this info accurately and usually they would just specify that only "Device or other IDs" is used for advertisement (Admob) when actually there are much more data is used by Admob.
So which data is actually collected and shared or just collected?
YouTube app definitely uses the same services Admob and Firebase libs
My Final decision (answer) would be:
If we use any Google library (Admob/Firebase) then the data is both collected and SHARED in our apps:
You are not Google therefore you are sharing data with Google who are a 3rd party to your app. If you wrote your own analytics software and hosted it on your servers then you would not be sharing data.
But many developers specify for their apps that they only collect the data but don't share it which is totally wrong! It's shared to Google company. It's not your company, it's not your own server.
For more information check the following discussing.
Here some links about which data Google collects:
Data is collected by Firebase Services
You can also use the following link for more libraries (but the info there may be outdated).
At the following page About data collection controls Google itself uses word Share:
