Apple is cracking down on apps that don&t communicate to users how their personal data is used, secured or shared. In an announcement posted to developers through the App Store Connect portal, Apple says that all apps, including those still in testing, will be required to have a privacy policy as of October 3, 2018.

Allowing apps without privacy policies is something of an obvious hole that Apple should have already plugged, given its generally protective nature over user data. But the change is even more critical now that EuropeGDPR regulations have gone into effect. Though the app makers themselves would be ultimately responsible for their customers& data, Apple, as the platform where those apps are hosted, has some responsibility here, too.

Platforms today are being held accountable for the behavior of their apps, and the data misuse that may occur as a result of their own policies around those apps.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, was dragged before the U.S. Senate about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from 87 million Facebook users was inappropriately obtained by way of Facebook apps.

Applenew requirement, therefore, provides the company with a layer of protection & any app that falls through the cracks going forward will be able to be held accountable by way of its own privacy policy and the statements it contains.

Apple also notes that the privacy policylink or text cannot be changed until the developer submits a new version of their app. It seems therestill a bit of loophole here, though & if developers add a link pointing to an external webpage, they can change what the webpage says at any time after their app is approved.

The new policy will be required for all apps and app updates across the App Store as well as through the TestFlight testing platform as of October 3, says Apple.

Whatnot clear is if Apple itself will be reviewing all the privacy policies themselves as part of this change, in order to reject apps with questionable data use policies or user protections. If it does, App Store review times could increase, unless the company hires more staff.

Apple has already taken a stance on apps it finds questionable, like Facebookdata-sucking VPN app Onavo, which it kicked out of the App Store earlier this month. The app had been live for years, however, and its App Store text did disclose the data it collected was shared with Facebook. The fact that Apple only booted it now seems to indicate it will take a tougher stance on apps which are designed to collect user data as one of their primary functions going forward.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Google and Mastercard have signed a secret deal so that Google could track retail sales using Mastercard transaction data. This is yet another proof that Googletrue customers are its advertising partners.

Online advertising have now overtaken all other advertising methods. Companies spend more on online ads than TV ads, newspaper ads and more.

And the reason why online ads have become so popular is that itmuch easier to track the effectiveness of your ad campaign. If you spend money on Google or Facebook ads, you can directly track the number of customers who end up on your online store because of your campaign. You can even see what they end up buying.

And yet, what if you see an online ad for a TV and then you buy a TV in store Tech companies have tried for years to bridge the gap between online ads and offline sales. Thatwhy Google tracks your location all the time, even if you turn off location history. And thatalso why Google and Mastercard may have signed a deal.

According to Bloomberg, all Mastercard transaction data in the U.S. is encrypted and transmitted to Google. Google is paying Mastercard, and potentially other card networks, to access this information.

Google can&t see individual transactions. But the company can extract relevant information from this pile of data. For instance, it could match offline purchases with user profiles. And the company knows if a user clicked on an ad.

Advertisers can upload an email database to match up offline sales with Google profiles and ad clicks. Google sends them reports with total offline sales. Advertisers then see how much money they generated thanks to their online ad campaign.

Ita good way to convince advertising clients that their campaign was effective. When those companies are thinking about their advertising budget, chances are they will end up spending more money on Google if they see that it leads to a lot sales.

This strategy shows once again that building an advertising business at scale requires some privacy concessions. Iteven more offensive that Google doesn&t talk about these deals more publicly. Users deserve to know what happens.

You can reportedly opt out of this Mastercard deal by turning off &Web and App Activity& in your Google account. But this setting is hard to find and encompasses a ton of stuff. Offline purchases are neither &web& nor &app& data for instance.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunchventure capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week, we were a man down, with the excellent Alex Wilhelm of Crunchbase News on a vacation that someone seems to have sanctioned, though it was not us, as we don&t believe in vacations. (Wilhelm, get back here.) We did, happily, have the very knowledgeable Kirsten Korosec of TechCrunch join us on the line; we were also joined by this weekpersonable in-studio guest: Lauren Kolodny, a partner at the San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm Aspect Ventures.

It was the perfect mix to talk about car makers and more car makers, including Tesla and CEO Elon Muskseemingly ill-planned plans to take the publicly traded company private, then vacillating a bit before changing his mind again, much to the chagrin of his board, the companyshareholders, and poor Kirsten, who was trying to enjoy her evening last Friday when Musk decided (for now) to leave well enough alone and drop the whole cockamamie idea of switching out Teslainvestor base.

We also talked about Toyotaannouncement this week that itsinking $500 million into Uber and forming an intriguing if confusing driverless-car pact in the process. And we lingered on Nio, a four-year-old, Shanghai-based electric car vehicle that, if it has its way, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in roughly two weeks — even though it only made $7 million in the first half of this year and reported a net loss of $503 million. Whocounting, though Not U.S. investors, it hopes.

Speaking of IPOs, we knew we&d be remiss not to talk about the IPO filing this week of SurveyMonkey, a now 19-year-old, San Mateo, Calif., company thatbeloved by both personal and business users of its analytical tools and surveys, but which is still not making money, owing in part to expensive debt that the company is currently servicing (and will pay down using its IPO proceeds). Will public shareholders embrace the company, which was valued at $2 billion during its last private round in 2014 but whose value has subsequently been marked down by fully 25 percent since by fund manager Fidelity Stay tuned!

We did not get to our favorite topic of scooters, running out of time to chat about thismajor development and also this one. Knowing how much we love to toot about les scoots, rest assured that they will back next week, as will we, so tune in again then!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.