As part of its continued effort to be as transparent as possible with its user base, Apple has now added a new section to its website that highlights privacy labels for all of its own applications. Privacy labels were first added to the App Store in December 2020 as a way for Apple to ensure that all developers are upfront with people about how apps use their data. Developers are required to indicate what data from the app is and isn’t linked to users, along with what data is used to track them across other applications and websites.
While privacy labels were seen as a big win for consumers that use that App Store, the feature didn’t sit well with certain developers. Facebook took the change particularly hard, so much so that the company went out of its way to create its own privacy explainers inside the Facebook app to reassure users that their data was safe and not egregiously used — despite Facebook’s privacy label on the App Store making it clear that’s not exactly true. Google had its own issue with privacy labels too, with the company halting updates for its iOS apps for two months following the initial rollout of privacy labels.
While some developers continue to take issue with the existence of privacy labels, Apple is going in the complete opposite direction by making privacy labels for its own applications even easier for users to find. On the Privacy section of the Apple website, a new Labels tab has been added to showcase privacy labels for every single Apple app across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. These labels have already been available in the App Store and on support pages for the specific apps, but users can now view all of them in one single location. The apps are listed in alphabetical order, clicking the dropdown arrow next to an app reveals its privacy label, and users can also click See Details to get an even more granular explanation of what data is/isn’t used.
How Apple’s Privacy Labels Compare To Other Apps
Taking a look at some of Apple’s applications compared to third-party ones, it is pretty noteworthy how much more privacy-focused the Apple apps are. For example, while Spotify uses location, identifiers, contact info, and usage data to track users, Apple Music doesn’t track any information at all. Dark Sky links location and identifiers to users, whereas The Weather Channel’s iOS app links considerably more info to its users — including purchases, user content, location, search history, and more. Scanning through the entire list, it’s pretty impressive that zero Apple applications track user data of any kind.
While none of this information is new, Apple’s decision to make it more widely available for anyone to see is a nice touch. Apple has its faults just like any other big tech company, but this level of transparency is worth commending. Especially when other brands continue to fight against the very idea of privacy labels.
