Apple publishes additional guidance for App Store privacy labels

Apple has published additional guidance for App Store privacy labels, including information about gameplay content and data types like email or text messages, in order to clarify how developers should fill out the privacy report.

In the guide, Apple clarified frequently asked questions including what “collect” and “tracking” means, what data types are, how each data type is used by developers and third-party-partners. 

“Collect” refers to transmitting data off the device in a way that allows you and/or your third-party partners to access it for a period longer than what is necessary to service the transmitted request in real time.

“Tracking” refers to linking data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device, such as a user ID, device ID, or profile, with Third-Party Data for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, or sharing data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device with a data broker.

The additional guide also includes corner cases including data collected via web traffic, in-app private messaging, IP address collection, different types of data, and Apple frameworks or services usage. 

Example

Your app has web views.

Data collected via web traffic must be declared, unless you are enabling the user to navigate the open web.

Starting in December, Apple has rolled out app privacy labels to allow users to better understand the data types apps may collect and whether that data is linked to them or used to track them.

According to a recent report, new privacy labels may not be completely accurate. In the meantime, we learned that Google finally added Apple’s app privacy labels to Gmail app.