An Analysis of Privacy Issues and Policies of eHealth Apps

Privacy issues in mobile apps have become a key concern of researchers, practitioners and users. We carried out a large-scale analysis of eHealth app user reviews to identify their key privacy concerns. We then analysed eHealth app privacy policies to assess if such concerns are actually addressed in these policies, and if the policies are clearly understood by end users. We found that many eHealth app privacy policies are imprecise, complex, require substantial effort to read, and require high reading ability from app users. We formulated several recommendations for developers to help address issues with app privacy concerns and app privacy policy construction. We developed a prototype tool to aid developers in considering and addressing these issues when developing their app privacy behaviours and policies.