How to deal with apps that do not have a privacy rating (yet)
- /e/ version: any
- Device model(s): any
Summary
Some apps in App Lounge do not have a privacy rating. It would be good to be able to manually get one.
Description
What is the current behavior?
- On a regular basis I discover apps without a privacy rating.
- My assumption: those are brand new apps or apps where an update has been published recently.
- App Lounge/e/Murena is calculating the privacy scoring based on permissions an app is asking and combining this at least with a tracker report generated by Exodus Privacy. For newly published apps this Exodus Privacy report might not be generated yet.
- Exodus Privacy reports usually can be generated straight away via https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/
Screenshots: an app that has been freshly published for the very first time on 15/1/2023. By 17/1/2023 there is still no rating available.
What is the improved behavior?
- When the app is a paid app, display N/A when there is no reports from Exodus Privacy available (which is usually the case as Exodus Privacy don't provide reports for paid apps except in some situations)
- When the app is a free app and Exodus Privacy report is missing to compute the Privacy Score :
- display a button "Request Exodus report" instead of N/A.
- when the user clicks on this button a dialog displaying the text below is opened
- when the report is available display the computed Privacy score in App Lounge in the app description and in any app list where the app is present. Make the information about trackers and authorizations available.
- if Exodus returns an error display "N/A" for the session duration
Text for the dialog:
Clicking on "OK" will open a tab in your browser with the app's package name prefilled.
Click on "Perform analysis" to start the analysis by Exodus.
When the button "See the report" is displayed (it can take a while depending on the app) you can close the tab and go back to the app description in App Lounge where you should see the Privacy Score. Sometimes Exodus can fail to analyze the app.NB: it can take up to 10 min for the score to be displayed in the app description
cf. the study.
What does it bring?
Better user experience and more privacy scores available in App Lounge.