Content standards guidelines

Please note: These guidelines should be used in conjunction with the changes to our QA process. Read more about these updates here

Unacceptable content

You must ensure that your application complies with all applicable laws and regulations and meets Vodafone’s standards for distributing content to the general public. In particular, please ensure that your application does not contain, link to or promote any of the following:

• indecent images of children, including pseudo photographs
• applications or content that place a child at risk or expose them to the risk of grooming
• defamatory content
• obscene content
• content that incites hatred or abuse, including  attacking or demeaning a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation or gender identity
• content that harasses third parties, which may include impersonations
• content that encourages acts of terrorism content intended to shock or to be offensive
• content that incites or glamorises illegal or anti-social behaviour

Adult content

Your application must be appropriate for the audience likely to use it. It should not contain, link to or promote over-18 content unless you have checks in place to ensure that the user is over 18. Please note that we may also place certain content behind access controls if we reasonably believe that it is not suitable for a younger audience, but you should not rely on this to ensure that a user is over 18.

User privacy

Please familiarise yourself with Vodafone’s guidelines on Designing for Privacy in Mobile Applications. We require all submitted applications to conform to the letter and spirit of these guidelines.

Advertising

These content standards also apply to any advertising that appears within your application in the same way that they apply to application content and other features. In addition, please ensure that the advertising content and services you use comply with any applicable laws, regulations and industry standards relating to privacy and consents for marketing and advertising.

Commercial guidelines

Your application must not contain, promote or link to content which Vodafone has determined to be commercially unacceptable, unless directly agreed with Vodafone beforehand. This includes but is not limited to:

• content/applications which provide or promote VoIP functionality
• content/applications which promote or deliver products or services which compete with Vodafone products and services
• third party app stores, marketplaces or any other sources of apps downloads outside of the Vodafone environment
• applications which use non Vodafone payment mechanisms

Third party rights

Your application must not infringe any third party rights. In particular, your application must not use the Vodafone trademarks:

• in the name of your application
• as part of your own trade marks
• in a manner which is likely to cause confusion
• to identify products to which they do not relate
• to imply endorsement or otherwise of products or services to which they do not relate
• in any manner which does or may cause damage to our reputation or the Vodafone trademarks;

Technical criteria

Your application must comply with the following, non-exhaustive, list of technical requirements:

• it must not damage or adversely affect a user’s device– for example it should not unreasonably consume the battery or processing power of the phone
• it must not make calls, send messages or send personal data without the user’s knowledge and consent
• it must install and uninstall intuitively and without errors and should clean up any data that is no longer required.
• the user must be able to receive calls and messages when the application is running; either in the foreground or background
• automated data connections should only generate a reasonable amount of data in home or roaming scenarios, and be user configurable – including the manual ability for a user to turn off data polling
• if large volumes of data traffic are generated by your app (for example video streaming apps), the user should be warned in advance. In such cases users should be provided with the option to turn data off, or to switch to WiFi. This is particularly important for when customers are roaming.
• Applications that process data traffic in the background (for example news syncing apps), the user should be warned and provided with the option to turn such features off or to only enable background traffic on WiFi.
• In low memory situations, the device OS may close your app if running in the background. In such situations any data used by your app or entered by users should not be lost or corrupted.
• your application must not cause the phone to crash or freeze, or otherwise impair its functionality
• where using non-Vodafone APIs or web services, you must comply with any terms and conditions imposed by the providers of these services