During WWDC 2020, Apple announced that it would force developers to disclose app privacy practices to customers through visible privacy labels that will appear on app pages in the store. Today, these new privacy labels have been made visible in all Apple App Stores, such as iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
These new tags are intended to give Apple customers an easy way to understand what kind of information an app collects by organizing it into three categories: data used to track your activities, data linked to you, and data not linked to you.
Tracking, according to Apple, refers to the act of linking both customer and user data through an app with user or device data collected from other apps, web pages, or even aggregated data from purchases in physical stores, etc., and which can be used to personalize ads or advertising metrics. Also included is data shared by the user or device with data brokers.
Apple says it will not remove apps from the App Store if they do not include this privacy information, but will no longer accept app updates until this information is included. This means that, eventually, any apps that haven't been abandoned will end up including these details, as compatibility issues with new operating systems will force apps to be updated.
It will be interesting to see if consumers react in any way to knowing this information and if knowing that an app we use collects a lot of information without our permission, their downloads or a decline in their usage will suffer ... or if they eventually fall into the routine of deeming evil necessary to continue using the apps we like… time will tell.
