For now, CurrentKey Stats will not be offered in the EU due to the DSA. I’ve received messages and emails from users in the EU asking about why it’s unavailable, and all I can say is: hopefully its a temporary outcome.
Like all indie developers on the App Store (and I guess Play Store), I am faced with a crazy situation. If I want to offer my app in the EU, I must let the store owner (in this case, Apple) post my phone number, email address, and physical address publicly on the App Store listing. Small indie dev shops like mine often don’t have P.O. boxes, so my business address is… personal. All of that contact info will, I assume, be available for bots to scrape. No thanks.
The dilemma is brought to us by a government that ostensibly cares a great deal about privacy – and in many cases, more so than its peers. But not so in this case.
The DSA requires developers who qualify as “Traders” (basically anyone trying to make money, as far as I can tell) to make a declaration as shown below:
Many developers have complained and/or are willfully refusing to comply (by telling Apple they are not a “trader” under DSA).
Many have noted in these forum posts that you can get a PO box, create a new “clean” email address, and get a prepaid phone number to preserve your privacy. Ok? All of that sounds expensive and also like a major hassle. I just want to focus on writing software.
Apple makes it easy to pull your app from stores in EU countries.
But this is tricky if you have a paying customer base in the EU. Fortunately, CurrentKey Stats does not (because its transition to a paid model happened after this DSA requirement was known).
I can imagine ways Apple could follow the spirit of the law, while also protecting and/or assuaging the privacy concerns of developers. Perhaps by simply putting this information behind a button on each App Store listing, which would send a request to Apple for the company to respond to. This simple additional step could help prevent a single user or bot from grabbing thousands of developers’ addresses. Maybe they already plan to implement the listing in this way, who knows? Without clear communication from Apple on this, I have to assume that they will do what they say: post my personal information for all to see.