Privacy is and has been a major industry issue for the past several years, so it’s surprising that so many mobile apps still do not have detectable privacy policies. Reporting on this matter, Pixalate has released its Missing Privacy Policy Report: Mobile Apps covering Q3 2022, an analysis of apps with no detected privacy policy.

Pixalate found more than 608,000 undetected privacy policy apps – or 12% of all available apps – across Google (484,000+) and Apple app stores (123,000+). Meanwhile, the majority of apps (80%) with no detectable privacy policy are sharing user location data with advertisers and or data brokers for use in the programmatic bid stream. More than 45,000 mobile apps with no detected privacy policy are likely child-directed, according to Pixalate data, and 100,000 games apps in the Google Play Store have no detected privacy policy. 

There has been some improvement quarter to quarter. The number of health and fitness apps (16.6k) with an undetected privacy policy has decreased by 10% from Q2 to Q3. The number of apps in the Apple App Store with no detected privacy policy (7%) is down from 9% in Q2 and 13% in Q1. Looking at the Google Play Store, 14% have no detected privacy policy, a decrease from 16% in Q2, and 17% in Q1. 

That said, the privacy of more than 66 million users of Google (58 million users) and Apple (7.4 million) mobile apps with undetected privacy policies is at risk. Almost three-quarters (71%) of Google Store apps with no detected privacy policy are registered with a non-corporate email and 77% of Google and Apple apps with undetected privacy policy have no identified country of registry.