skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Understanding Challenges for Developers to Create Accurate Privacy Nutrition Labels
Apple announced the introduction of app privacy details to their App Store in December 2020, marking the frst ever real-world, large-scale deployment of the privacy nutrition label concept, which had been introduced by researchers over a decade earlier. The Apple labels are created by app developers, who self-report their app’s data practices. In this paper, we present the frst study examining the usability and understandability of Apple’s privacy nutrition label creation process from the developer’s perspective. By observing and interviewing 12 iOS app developers about how they created the privacy label for a real-world app that they developed, we identified common challenges for correctly and efciently creating privacy labels. We discuss design implications both for improving Apple’s privacy label design and for future deployment of other standardized privacy notices.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1801472
PAR ID:
10399853
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
SIGCHI Conference: Human Factors in Computing Systems
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 24
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Since December 2020, the Apple App Store has required all developers to create a privacy label when submitting new apps or app updates. However, there has not been a comprehensive study on how developers responded to this requirement. We present the frst measurement study of Apple privacy nutrition labels to understand how apps on the U.S. App Store create and update privacy labels. We collected weekly snapshots of the privacy label and other metadata for all the 1.4 million apps on the U.S. App Store from April 2 to November 5, 2021. Our analysis showed that 51.6% of apps still do not have a privacy label as of November 5, 2021. Although 35.3% of old apps have created a privacy label, only 2.7% of old apps created a privacy label without app updates (i.e., voluntary adoption). Our findings suggest that inactive apps have little incentive to create privacy labels. 
    more » « less
  2. Apple introduced privacy labels in Dec. 2020 as a way for developers to report the privacy behaviors of their apps. While Apple does not validate labels, they also require developers to provide a privacy policy, which offers an important comparison point. In this paper, we fine-tuned BERT-based language models to extract privacy policy features for 474,669 apps on the iOS App Store, comparing the output to the privacy labels. We identify discrepancies between the policies and the labels, particularly as they relate to data collected linked to users. We find that 228K apps' privacy policies may indicate data collection linked to users than what is reported in the privacy labels. More alarming, a large number (97%) of the apps with a Data Not Collected privacy label have a privacy policy indicating otherwise. We provide insights into potential sources for discrepancies, including the use of templates and confusion around Apple's definitions and requirements. These results suggest that significant work is still needed to help developers more accurately label their apps. Our system can be incorporated as a first-order check to inform developers when privacy labels are possibly misapplied. 
    more » « less
  3. Starting December 2020, all new and updated iOS apps must display app-based privacy labels. As the first large-scale implementation of privacy nutrition labels in a real-world setting, we aim to understand how these labels affect perceptions of app behavior. Replicating the methodology of Emani-Naeini et al. [IEEE S&P '21] in the space of IoT privacy nutrition labels, we conducted an online study in January 2023 on Prolific with n=1,505 participants to investigate the impact of privacy labels on users' risk perception and willingness to install apps. We found that many privacy label attributes raise participants' risk perception and lower their willingness to install an app. For example, when the app privacy label indicates that financial info will be collected and linked to their identities, participants were 15 times more likely to report increased privacy and security risks associated with the app. Likewise, when a label shows that sensitive info will be collected and used for cross-app/website tracking, participants were 304 times more likely to report a decrease in their willingness to install. However, participants had difficulty understanding privacy label jargon such as diagnostics, identifiers, track and linked. We provide recommendations for enhancing privacy label transparency, the importance of label clarity and accuracy, and how labels can impact consumer choice when suitable alternative apps are available. 
    more » « less
  4. People value their privacy but often lack the time to read privacy policies. This issue is exacerbated in the context of mobile apps, given the variety of data they collect and limited screen space for disclosures. Privacy nutrition labels have been proposed to convey data practices to users succinctly, obviating the need for them to read a full privacy policy. In fall 2020, Apple introduced privacy labels for mobile apps, but research has shown that these labels are ineffective, partly due to their complexity, confusing terminology, and suboptimal in- formation structure. We propose a new design for mobile app privacy labels that addresses information layout challenges by representing data collection and use in a color-coded, expand- able grid format. We conducted a between-subjects user study with 200 Prolific participants to compare user performance when viewing our new label against the current iOS label. Our findings suggest that our design significantly improves users’ ability to answer key privacy questions and reduces the time required for them to do so. 
    more » « less
  5. People value their privacy but often lack the time to read privacy policies. This issue is exacerbated in the context of mobile apps, given the variety of data they collect and limited screen space for disclosures. Privacy nutrition labels have been proposed to convey data practices to users succinctly, obviating the need for them to read a full privacy policy. In fall 2020, Apple introduced privacy labels for mobile apps, but research has shown that these labels are ineffective, partly due to their complexity, confusing terminology, and suboptimal information structure. We propose a new design for mobile app privacy labels that addresses information layout challenges by representing data collection and use in a color-coded, expandable grid format. We conducted a between-subjects user study with 200 Prolific participants to compare user performance when viewing our new label against the current iOS label. Our findings suggest that our design significantly improves users' ability to answer key privacy questions and reduces the time required for them to do so. 
    more » « less