Informed Choice? An Assessment of Privacy Labels for Suicide Prevention Apps.

Abstract

Suicide prevention apps have the potential to support at-risk individuals in the community; however, users are often uninformed about the privacy implications of mobile app use. To address this issue, privacy labels were introduced to app stores. This study assessed the comprehensiveness of suicide prevention app privacy policies and the accuracy of app store privacy labels. Privacy policies were often missing, written at a college-level, average over 1600 words, and were incomplete in reporting privacy and security protections. Privacy labels accurately conveyed data use in most apps but had more discrepancies for data types. These findings indicate the minimal change in digital health privacy policy practices.