Understanding iOS Privacy Nutrition Labels: An Exploratory Large-Scale Analysis of App Store Data

Abstract

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 first 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.