Report: 60% of apps removed from the App Store did not have a privacy policy

Pixalate’s “First Half of 2021 Removed Mobile Apps Report” shows more than 813,000 apps were removed in the first half of 2021 from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, with over 86% of these applications targeting children 12 and under.

According to the report (via VentureBeat), which analyzed more than 5 million mobile apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, these apps had more than 21 million consumer reviews on the App Store before they were removed.

Removal of apps can be caused by various factors including violation of app store policy or developer takedown.

Of potential concern to advertisers and consumers, these apps may remain installed on a device even after the app has been removed from the App Store. If an app has been removed due to a violation of App Store policy, there is an increased risk to consumer privacy and safety, as well as brand safety for advertisers.

The report also shows that 89% of apps removed from the App Store targeting children 12 and under, 59% had no privacy policy detected. Over 60% of apps removed from the list in China also did not have a privacy policy detected.

The Deleted Mobile Apps report also shows that 83% of apps deleted during the period had no addresses listed (78%) or no identifiable addresses (5%).

For the Google Play Store, it gets a bit more complicated because 66% of deleted apps had at least one “dangerous permission”. For example, 27% of them had access to GPS coordinates and 19% could access the camera.

Here are the 20 most popular apps before they were removed from the App Store:

You can read the full report here, where you can find more information about these deleted apps.

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