Understanding User Acceptance of Privacy Labels: Barriers and Enhancements

As software development gradually operates under the scrutiny of privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, developers are required not only to implement robust privacy practices but also to communicate these practices to users. Privacy labels emerge as a potential solution to help users understand these data practices. The major app platforms require developers to disclose their apps’ data practices through standardized privacy labels. In this paper, we investigate user perceptions of privacy labels through a comprehensive analysis of online discussions and a structured user study. First, we analyze 2,880 Reddit comments related to privacy labels, using a chain-of-thought LLM classifier to isolate 548 privacy-label–specific comments and BERTopic clustering to surface five core user concerns about privacy labels: Transparency, Trust in self-reporting, Messaging-app practices, App Store permissions, and Data-category accuracy. To complement our Reddit analysis, we conduct a user study with 50 participants. The study reveals that 76% of the participants indicated that privacy labels influence their app download decisions and the amount of data practice in the privacy label is the most significant factor.