HispanicBusiness

California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed suit Thursday against Delta Air Lines in her first enforcement action since she promised to crack down on companies that don't inform consumers about their policies for handling personal data collected by smartphone apps and other online services.

The action is part of a high-profile campaign that Harris has waged to make businesses adopt privacy policies and post them on their mobile apps. As the state's top law enforcement officer, she sent warning letters in October to Delta and about 100 other companies that operate in California, informing the businesses that they were violating the state's Internet privacy law.

Delta has a smartphone app that customers can

use to check into flights, download boarding passes and obtain other information. The app collects a variety of personal information from customers, including their frequent-flier account numbers, birthdates, credit card numbers and geographic locations, according to the lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, which said the app does not tell consumers how Delta uses the information.

"California law is clear that mobile apps collecting personal information need privacy policies, and that the users of those apps deserve to know what is being done with their personal information," Harris said in a statement distributed by her office Thursday evening. A Delta representative couldn't be reached for comment.

Delta does have a

privacy policy on its website, but the lawsuit says it is not "reasonably accessible" to users of the Fly Delta app, and it does not list all the information collected by the app.

In the lawsuit, Harris's office is asking for a court order that would force Delta to post a policy on the app, and pay $2,500 for each violation demonstrated at trial.

Distributed by MCT Information Services