PROTECTION OF MOBILE APPLICATION USERS’ PERSONAL DATA

Abstract

At present, mobile apps become an important part of many people’s lives. A study conducted in 2014 by twenty-six worldwide data protection authorities showed that there are three major data protection problems in the mobile app context. First, the mobile apps appear to request excessive access to personal data. Second, there is no notice about data protection policies that mobile app users could read before downloading such mobile apps. Third, mobile app users have no real control over their personal data.

Although Thailand has also been confronted by mobile app data protection problems, the existing laws are insufficient to govern such problems. Moreover, there have been attempts to pass personal data protection bills intended to deal with the data protection problems. However, if either of the bills were enacted, there would still be shortcomings causing mobile app data protection problems to remain unresolved.

This thesis aims to study on the problems of Thai law on mobile app data protection, analyze and compare to foreign legislations, namely Canada, the United States of America, and the European Union. In conclusion, this thesis proposes that     a specific law providing mobile app developers’ liabilities should be enacted and        a specific authority handling data protection complaints should be established in order to govern the mobile app data protection problems.