Ishika Keswani, Kerick Walker, Adrian Clement, Eusila Kitur, Nannapas Wonghirundacha, Ryan Aubrey, Vivien Song, and Eleanor Birrell, Pomona College
Privacy labels are concise, standardized representations of privacy policies that are required for apps on both the iOS and Android app stores. However, prior research shows that users find current app privacy labels confusing and are unable to correctly identify data practices based on these labels. This work explores how understandings of technical terms impact comprehension of app privacy labels. We conduct a pair of online user studies—a qualitative user study (n=46) and a large-scale quantitative study (n=383) in which we identify terms used in privacy labels that are widely misunderstood and explore common misunderstandings. We also formulate evidence-based recommendations for how to improve app privacy labels.
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author = {Ishika Keswani and Kerick Walker and Adrian Clement and Eusila Kitur and Nannapas Wonghirundacha and Ryan Aubrey and Vivien Song and Eleanor Birrell},
title = {User Understandings of Technical Terms in App Privacy Labels},
booktitle = {Twenty-First Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2025)},
year = {2025},
isbn = {978-1-939133-51-9},
address = {Seattle, WA},
pages = {279--298},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2025/presentation/keswani},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}
