The U.S. Chamber of Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to Apple this week [PDF] wondering about the accuracy of the app’s privacy labels, which Apple asked developers to start adding to apps in December.
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In the letter, the committee asks Apple about reports suggesting that some of the apps’ privacy tags provide “misleading and false information.” The interrogation was determined by a story from January Washington Post who found over a dozen applications with inaccurate privacy labels.
Apple requires developers to provide information about all the data that an application collects, but developers self-send the details of the privacy label to an honor system, without verification from Apple itself. Apple said it routinely audits the information provided and works with developers to correct inaccuracies, but it is impossible for the company to verify the privacy list of each application.
App developers who are audited and have not disclosed accurate privacy information may reject future application updates or, in some cases, applications may be completely removed from the App Store if they are not brought into compliance.
Committee members Frank Pallone and Jan Schakowsky told Apple that a privacy label “is not a protection if it is fake,” in a letter urging Apple to improve application privacy labels.
“According to recent reports, application privacy labels can be extremely misleading or blatantly false. Using software that records data transmitted to trackers, a reporter found that about a third of evaluated applications that said they do not collect data have inaccurate labels. A privacy label is not a protection if it is false. We urge Apple to improve the validity of its application privacy labels to ensure that consumers are provided with meaningful information about their application data practices and that consumers are not affected by these potentially misleading practices. “
Apple has been asked to provide the following details in its application privacy system:
- Details of the process by which Apple audits the privacy information provided by application developers and how often audits are performed;
- How many of the applications audited since the implementation of the application’s privacy label have been found to provide inaccurate or misleading information;
- If Apple ensures that application privacy tags are corrected for inaccuracies or misleading information; and
- Details of Apple’s application policies when an application does not provide accurate privacy information for the application’s privacy label.
The committee is asking Apple to send the requested information by February 23, so Apple has two weeks to respond.
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