Availability, readability, and content of privacy policies and terms of agreements of mental health apps
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To assess the availability, readability, and privacy-related content of the privacy policies and terms of agreement of mental health apps available through popular digital stores. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Popular smartphone app stores were searched using combinations of keywords "track" and "mood" and their synonyms. The first 100 apps from each search were evaluated for inclusion and exclusion criteria. Apps were assessed for availability of a privacy policy (PP) and terms of agreement (ToA) and if available, these documents were evaluated for both content and readability. RESULTS: Most of the apps collected in the sample did not include a PP or ToA. PPs could be accessed for 18% of iOS apps and 4% of Android apps; whereas ToAs were available for 15% of iOS and 3% of Android apps. Many PPs stated that users' information may be shared with third parties (71% iOS, 46% Android). DISCUSSION: Results demonstrate that information collection is occurring with the majority of apps that allow users to track the status of their mental health. Most of the apps collected in the initial sample did not include a PP or ToA despite this being a requirement by the store. The majority of PPs and ToAs that were evaluated are written at a post-secondary reading level and disclose that extensive data collection is occurring. CONCLUSION: Our findings raise concerns about consent, transparency, and data sharing associated with mental health apps and highlight the importance of improved regulation in the mobile app environment.
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Privacy policies, if existent, lack transparency.
“and privacy policies (if existent) lack transparency (Robillard et al. 2019; Huckvale et al. 2019).”
From Evaluating the quality, safety, and functionality of commonly used smartphone apps for bipolar disorder mood and sleep self-management (2022) · cites this paper as Robillard et al. 2019
These commonly used apps perform well compared to a review of privacy policies for mental health tracking apps, which reported only 18% of iOS and 4% of Android apps made privacy policies available.
“These commonly used apps also perform well compared to a review of privacy policies for mental health tracking apps (Robillard et al. 2019), which reported only 18% of iOS and 4% of Android apps made privacy policies available.”
From Evaluating the quality, safety, and functionality of commonly used smartphone apps for bipolar disorder mood and sleep self-management (2022) · cites this paper as Robillard et al. 2019
The high reading grade of the privacy policies echoed a commonly cited issue, that the readability and comprehension of policies are often inaccessible.
“However, the high reading grade of the policies echoed a commonly cited issue, that the readability and comprehension of policies are often inaccessible (Robillard et al. 2019).”
From Evaluating the quality, safety, and functionality of commonly used smartphone apps for bipolar disorder mood and sleep self-management (2022) · cites this paper as Robillard et al. 2019
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Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) in Mental Health Informatics
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- Authors
- Robillard, J. M., Feng, T. L., Sporn, A. B., Lai, J.-A., Lo, C., Ta, M., & Nadler, R.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- University of Ottawa (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Robillard, Julie M.
- Venue
- Internet Interventions
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-09
- Volume
- 17
- Pages
- 100243
- ISSN
- 2214-7829 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6430038
- OpenAlex
- W2921902116
- Cited by
- 111
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 31.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Internet Interventions (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute
- British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Keywords
- mental health apps, privacy policies, contract terms, readability, data sharing, third-party data sharing, informed consent, transparency, mood tracking, digital mental health
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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