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Privacy Best Practices for In-App Automation

We recommend the following privacy best practices when using In-App Automation.

In-App Messages appear inside your app. They are stored on the user’s device then displayed according to the triggers you define. If you plan to use In-App Automation, we recommend that you offer some way for users to opt-out of receiving messages via In-App Automation. The method and degree of urgency in applying these recommendations depends on whether the messages you plan to send are transactional or commercial.

This Privacy Best Practices guide does not, and is not intended to, provide legal or compliance advice.

A message is transactional if it is necessary in order to use your product or service. These are also called service messages. Examples include a purchase confirmation, receipt delivery, gate change notification. Other examples include app onboarding messages that educate users on the purpose of your app, how to use a feature, or describe the benefits of opting-in to push notifications or location services, etc.

Transactional messages can be enabled by default, but we strongly recommend that you expose the ability within your app for your app users to opt-out of receiving in-app messages.

To accomplish this, we recommend that you implement a switch to turn off in-app messages within your app. This can be on your app-level Settings screen, a Privacy Settings screen, or any other place that’s convenient in your app and easily accessible by users of your app. The UI for this can be a toggle switch or a checkbox. Users typically access these settings screens through the main app’s navigation (often accessed through a “hamburger” icon).

Airship has provided methods within its SDK for disabling In-App Automation that you can control from that settings screen UI. See below for developer instructions for iOS and Android.

Companies that are particularly sensitive to customer concerns about any type of messaging can implement a modal prompt within the UI to give their customers the chance to opt-in to these messages, leaving In-App Automation disabled by default.

Commercial Messages (Required)

A message is considered a commercial or a marketing message if it informs the user about products or services other than the one they’re using. For sending commercial messages, we strongly recommend that you provide an easy way for users of your app to out-out of receiving commercial messages via In-App Automation.

We recommend confirming opt-in to receive in-app commercial messages upon initial registration or sign-in to your app. This is typically done with a checkbox below a registration screen, and that checkbox can be enabled by default. You should collect this the first time that your app runs, on a welcome screen or sign-in screen, alongside any other user preferences that you collect at that time.

We also recommend exposing the ability to opt-out at a later date through an Application Settings or Privacy Settings screen within your app’s navigation. Developer Recommendations Here is a code snippet demonstrating how you would call our SDK from a UI element to disable In-App Automation in your app for one or more specific users.

For iOS:

UAInAppAutomation.shared().isEnabled = false

For Android:

InAppAutomation.shared().setEnabled(false)

SDK Reference Documentation