In December of 2020, Apple started to require app developers to self-report privacy label annotations on their apps indicating what data is collected and how it is used.To understand the adoption and shifts in privacy labels in the App Store, we collected nearly weekly snapshots of over 1.6 million apps for over a year (July 15, 2021 -- October 25, 2022) to understand the dynamics of privacy label ecosystem. Nearly two years after privacy labels launched, only 70.1% of apps have privacy labels, but we observed an increase of 28% during the measurement period. Privacy label adoption rates are mostly driven by new apps rather than older apps coming into compliance. Of apps with labels, 18.1% collect data used to track users, 38.1% collect data that is linked to a user identity, and 42.0% collect data that is not linked. A surprisingly large share (41.8%) of apps with labels indicate that they do not collect any data, and while we do not perform direct analysis of the apps to verify this claim, we observe that it is likely that many of these apps are choosing a Does Not Collect label due to being forced to select a label, rather than this being the true behavior of the app. Moreover, for apps that have assigned labels during the measurement period nearly all do not change their labels, and when they do, the new labels indicate more data collection than less. This suggests that privacy labels may be a ``set once'' mechanism for developers that may not actually provide users with the clarity needed to make informed privacy decisions.
翻译:2020年12月,苹果开始要求应用程序开发人员对其应用程序进行隐私标签注释,以表明收集了哪些数据以及如何使用这些数据。为了了解应用商店隐私标签的采用情况和变化,我们在一年多的时间里(2021年7月15日至2022年10月25日),每周收集了超过160万个应用程序的快照,以了解隐私标签生态系统的动态性。在隐私标签推出近两年后,仅有70.1%的应用程序具有隐私标签,但在测量期间增长了28%。隐私标签的采用率主要受新应用程序的驱动,而不是老应用程序的整顿规范化。具有标签的应用程序中,18.1%收集用于跟踪用户的数据,38.1%收集与用户身份相关的数据,42.0%收集未关联的数据。惊人的是,41.8%的标有隐私标签的应用程序表示它们不收集任何数据。虽然我们未对这些应用程序进行直接分析以验证这一说法,但我们观察到许多这些应用程序选择不收集标签,是由于必须选择标签,而不是这是应用程序的真实行为。此外,对于在测量期间分配标签的应用程序,几乎所有应用程序都不会更改其标签,而当它们这样做时,新标签比旧标签表明更多的数据收集。这表明隐私标签可能是开发人员的“设置一次”机制,可能无法为用户提供所需的清晰度,以做出知情的隐私决策。