Exploring the Effectiveness of Google Play Store's Privacy Transparency Channels

2025-11-17

AI Summary

This study investigates the practical impact of three official privacy transparency mechanisms—Data Safety Labels, privacy policies, and permission lists—on users’ app adoption decisions in the Google Play Store. Employing a mixed-methods experimental design with 190 participants, we systematically compare these mechanisms across risk perception, information conveyance efficiency, and interface intuitiveness, while also examining their synergistic effects. Results indicate that privacy policies achieve the highest information conveyance efficacy; Data Safety Labels exhibit superior interface intuitiveness; and permission lists most strongly trigger privacy concerns. Critically, each mechanism exhibits inherent limitations when deployed in isolation, underscoring the necessity of coordinated optimization to enhance overall transparency. The study’s primary contribution lies in empirically revealing the complementary roles of multi-channel privacy disclosures and providing evidence-based design principles and actionable optimization pathways for platform-level privacy interfaces.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Search and Optimization: Applications

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

With the requirements and emphases on privacy transparency placed by regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, the Google Play Store requires Android developers to more responsibly communicate their apps' privacy practices to potential users by providing the proper information via the data safety, privacy policy, and permission manifest privacy transparency channels. However, it is unclear how effective those channels are in helping users make informed decisions in the app selection and installation process. In this article, we conducted a study for 190 participants to interact with our simulated privacy transparency channels of mobile apps. We quantitatively analyzed (supplemented by qualitative analysis) participants' responses to five sets of questions. We found that data safety provides the most intuitive user interfaces, privacy policy is most informative and effective, while permission manifest excels at raising participants' concerns about an app's overall privacy risks. These channels complement each other and should all be improved.

Problem

• Evaluating effectiveness of Google Play privacy transparency channels
• Assessing how privacy information aids user app selection decisions
• Comparing data safety, privacy policy and permission manifest channels

Innovation

• Data safety provides intuitive user interfaces
• Privacy policy is most informative and effective
• Permission manifest raises privacy risk concerns