Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36433560›Full record

ArticleSensors (Basel, Switzerland)2022

Do the Right Thing: A Privacy Policy Adherence Analysis of over Two Million Apps in Apple iOS App Store.

Hamad Alamri, Carsten Maple, Saad Mohamad, Gregory Epiphaniou

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Hamad AlamriWarwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
Carsten MapleWarwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.ORCID 0000-0002-4715-212X
Saad MohamadSchool of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TD, UK.
Gregory EpiphaniouWarwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Mobile app developers are often obliged by regulatory frameworks to provide a privacy policy in natural comprehensible language to describe their apps' privacy practices. However, prior research has revealed that: (1) not all app developers offer links to their privacy policies; and (2) even if they do offer such access, it is difficult to determine if it is a valid link to a (valid) policy. While many prior studies looked at this issue in Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and particularly the iOS store, is much less clear. In this paper, we conduct the first and the largest study to investigate the previous issues in the iOS app store ecosystem. First, we introduce an App Privacy Policy Extractor (APPE), a system that embraces and analyses the metadata of over two million apps to give insightful information about the distribution of the supposed privacy policies, and the content of the provided privacy policy links, store-wide. The result shows that only 58.5% of apps provide links to purported privacy policies, while 39.3% do not provide policy links at all. Our investigation of the provided links shows that only 38.4% of those links were directed to actual privacy policies, while 61.6% failed to lead to a privacy policy. Further, for research purposes we introduce the App Privacy Policy Corpus (APPC-451K); the largest app privacy policy corpus consisting of data relating to more than 451K verified privacy policies.

Indexed as

Mobile ApplicationsPrivacyEcosystemMetadataPolicyApple App Storeapp storeiOS privacyprivacyprivacy policy

Identifiers

PMID36433560
PMCPMC9698788

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.