Lalaine: Measuring and Characterizing Non-Compliance of Apple Privacy Labels

As a key supplement to privacy policies that are known to be lengthy and difficult to read, Apple has launched app privacy labels, which purportedly help users more easily understand an app's privacy practices. However, false and misleading privacy labels can dupe privacy-conscious consumers into downloading data-intensive apps, ultimately eroding the credibility and integrity of the labels. Although Apple releases requirements and guidelines for app developers to create privacy labels, little is known about whether and to what extent the privacy labels in the wild are correct and compliant, reflecting the actual data practices of iOS apps.

This paper presents the first systematic study, based on our new methodology named Lalaine, to evaluate data-flow to privacy-label flow-to-label consistency. Lalaine fully analyzed the privacy labels and binaries of 5,102 iOS apps, shedding lights on the prevalence and seriousness of privacy-label non-compliance. We provide detailed case studies and analyze root causes for privacy label non-compliance that complements prior understandings. This has led to new insights for improving privacy-label design and compliance requirements, so app developers, platform stakeholders, and policy-makers can better achieve their privacy and accountability goals. Lalaine is thoroughly evaluated for its high effectiveness and efficiency. We are responsibly reporting the results to stakeholders.