My app violates the Android Advertising ID policy

ilopezluna picture ilopezluna · May 10, 2018 · Viewed 16.6k times · Source

Google Play Team has rejected my app because:

The advertising identifier must not be connected to personally-identifiable information or associated with any persistent device identifier (for example: SSAID, MAC address, IMEI, etc.) without explicit consent of the user.

For example, we have identified that your app's attribution SDK enables collection of IMEI from devices which have an Android advertising ID without prominent disclosure, which is a violation of our Android Advertising ID policy.

I'm not collecting the IMEI explicitly so the IMEI must be accessed by one of the dependencies of the app.

How I could detect which one is accessing to the IMEI?

Updated: These are my dependencies

    compile "com.android.support:appcompat-v7:$support_version"
    compile "com.android.support:mediarouter-v7:$support_version"      // I'm using icons from here, like ic_media_pause and such
    compile "com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:$support_version"
    compile "com.android.support:design:$support_version"
    compile "com.android.support:support-compat:$support_version"

    compile 'com.android.support:multidex:1.0.2'

    // individual dependencies -- https://stackoverflow.com/a/43407421/1121497
    compile "com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:$gms_version"
    compile "com.google.android.gms:play-services-analytics:$gms_version"
    compile "com.google.android.gms:play-services-gcm:$gms_version"
    compile "com.google.firebase:firebase-appindexing:$gms_version"
    compile "com.google.firebase:firebase-core:$gms_version"

    compile "com.facebook.android:facebook-android-sdk:$facebook_version"
    compile 'com.facebook.android:notifications:1.0.2'

    compile 'com.batch.android:batch-sdk:1.11.0'

    compile 'commons-codec:commons-codec:1.9'
    compile 'com.nostra13.universalimageloader:universal-image-loader:1.9.3'
    compile 'com.github.chrisbanes.photoview:library:1.2.2'
    compile 'de.greenrobot:eventbus:2.4.0'
    compile 'info.hoang8f:android-segmented:1.0.5'
    compile 'io.card:android-sdk:5.4.2'
    compile 'me.dm7.barcodescanner:zxing:1.9'
    compile 'com.google.android.exoplayer:exoplayer:r2.2.0'
    compile 'com.squareup.retrofit:retrofit:1.9.0'
    compile 'com.squareup.okhttp:okhttp:2.2.0'

    compile 'io.reactivex:rxandroid:1.1.0'
    compile 'io.reactivex:rxjava:1.1.0'
    //compile 'io.reactivex:rxjava-joins:0.22.0' // to use JoinObservable (and-then-when combinator)

    compile "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib-jdk7:$kotlin_version"

    // In libs we have:
    // - ZooZ 1.02 : From https://github.com/Zooz/Zooz-Android/releases/tag/1.02
    // - AppsFlyer : AF-Android-SDK 2.3.1.13 jar
    // - Volley
    compile fileTree(dir: '../libs', include: '*.jar')

    compile('com.crashlytics.sdk.android:crashlytics:2.7.1@aar') {
        transitive = true
    }

Note: AppsFlyer has been configured as:

        AppsFlyerLib.setCollectIMEI(false); // https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/ads/ad-id/
        AppsFlyerLib.setCollectMACAddress(false);
        AppsFlyerLib.setCollectAndroidID(false);

Answer

Tayyab Amin picture Tayyab Amin · Sep 29, 2018

My application is also removed by Google. I have done the following method to republish it.

  1. Create a privacy policy of application using Free Privacy Policy URL

  2. Publish the privacy policy at URL

  3. Copy the published privacy policy link and add it in Developer Play Console.
  4. Add the privacy policy link in Application also (Optional)

Hope this will help you also.