How Usable Are iOS App Privacy Labels?

Thumbnail Image

Files

popets-2022-0106.pdf (2.08 MB)

Links to Files

https://petsymposium.org/2022/files/papers/issue4/popets-2022-0106.pdf

Permanent Link

http://hdl.handle.net/11603/25250

Collections

UMBC Information Systems Department
UMBC Faculty Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5759-9793

Date

2022-06-16

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
preprints
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Subjects

Abstract

Standardized privacy labels that succinctly summarize those data practices that people are most commonly concerned about offer the promise of providing users with more effective privacy notices than fulllength privacy policies. With their introduction by Apple in iOS 14 and Google’s recent adoption in its Play Store, mobile app privacy labels are for the first time available at scale to users. We report the first in-depth interview study with 24 lay iPhone users to investigate their experiences, understanding, and perceptions of Apple’s privacy labels. We uncovered misunderstandings of and dissatisfaction with the iOS privacy labels that hinder their effectiveness, including confusing structure, unfamiliar terms, and disconnection from permission settings and controls. We identify areas where app privacy labels might be improved and propose suggestions to address shortcomings to make them more understandable, usable, and useful.