How to Read Apple App Privacy Labels for a Health App

How do you read Apple's App Privacy labels for a health app? Scroll down any App Store page to the App Privacy section. It groups data into up to three boxes: Data Used to Track You, Data Linked to You and Data Not Linked to You. For a GLP-1 or health app, check the tracking box first, then see whether Health & Fitness data appears and what it is used for.

Then remember the small line on every label: "This information has not been verified by Apple." The developer fills it in. It is a useful summary, not an audit. This guide covers Apple's labels only; Android users can jump to our guide to Google Play's Data safety section.

Where do you find the privacy label?

Open the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, open the app's page, and scroll past the screenshots, ratings and "What's New." The App Privacy heading shows a summary of the data types the developer declared. Tap into it to see the full breakdown, grouped by purpose.

You will also see a note that "privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age," and a link to the developer's privacy policy.

What do the three boxes mean?

Data Used to Track You

This is the big one. Apple defines tracking as linking data from the app with data from other companies' apps, websites or offline sources for targeted advertising or ad measurement, or sharing it with a data broker.

For a health app, seeing Health & Fitness in this box would be a red flag: it means your health data may be combined with information from elsewhere for advertising. Many people would want to stop there.

Data Linked to You

Data collected in a way that is tied to your identity, such as your account, your device or your details. For any app that syncs your logs to an account, most of what you enter will be here. That is normal: syncing your weight to your account is, by definition, linking it to you.

The useful part is the purpose listed next to each type. "App Functionality" for Health & Fitness is what you would expect. Health data listed under "Third-Party Advertising" or "Developer's Advertising or Marketing" deserves a hard look.

Data Not Linked to You

Data the developer says is collected without being tied to your identity. Apple's rules say that to count as not linked, direct identifiers must be removed before collection and the developer must not re-link the data later.

You may also see Data Not Collected, which means the developer says the app collects nothing.

Which data types matter most for a health app?

Apple uses a fixed list of data types. The ones to look for in a GLP-1 or weight app:

Data type	What Apple means	Why you care
Health	Health and medical data, including data from HealthKit or anything you enter yourself	Your doses, symptoms, weight
Fitness	Fitness and exercise data	Steps, workouts
Photos or Videos	Your photos or videos	Progress photos, meal photos
Contact Info	Name, email, phone, address	Who you are
Identifiers	User ID, Device ID (such as the advertising identifier)	What links everything together
Usage Data	Product interaction, advertising data	How you use the app
Diagnostics	Crash data, performance data	Usually low-sensitivity
Sensitive Info	Includes pregnancy, disability, genetic or biometric data, among others	Highly personal categories

And the purposes Apple lets developers choose from: Third-Party Advertising, Developer's Advertising or Marketing, Analytics, Product Personalization, App Functionality, and Other Purposes.

A worked example: our own label

GLPily's App Store label lists Health & Fitness, Contact Info, User Content (photos), Purchases, Identifiers, Usage Data, Diagnostics and Other Data under Data Linked to You. Health & Fitness is listed for App Functionality, because your logs sync to your account so they are there on every device. Some other data types, such as usage and advertising data, are listed for analytics and marketing purposes. You can open the App Store page and check it yourself, then compare it with our privacy policy. That kind of side-by-side is exactly what we recommend for any app.

What can a privacy label not tell you?

Labels are summaries with real limits:

• They are self-reported. Apple tells developers they are responsible for keeping answers accurate and up to date, including data collected by third-party code inside the app. But Apple says on the label itself that it has not verified the information.
• They do not name companies. "Analytics" does not tell you which analytics company. The privacy policy should.
• Some data can be left off. Apple has narrow "optional disclosure" rules, for example for data that users submit only occasionally, through a form that clearly shows what is sent, outside the app's main purpose.
• They do not cover retention or deletion. How long data is kept and how to delete it lives in the privacy policy, not the label. Our privacy policy checklist covers what to look for there.
• Developers can update them any time, without a new app version. A label you read last year may have changed.

How can you check what an app actually does on your iPhone?

Two built-in tools help you go beyond what the developer declared:

App Privacy Report. Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → App Privacy Report and tap Turn On App Privacy Report (iOS 15.2 or later). After it collects information for a while, it shows how often apps accessed things like Photos, Camera or Location, and which web domains each app contacted, covering the past 7 days. If a health app contacts lots of advertising domains, that is worth knowing.

Tracking permission. If an app wants to track you across other companies' apps and websites, iOS asks first. You can tap Ask App Not to Track. To review later, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, where you can switch each app off or stop all apps from asking.

For camera, photo and notification permissions specifically, see app permissions explained for GLP-1 tracking.

A 60-second label check before you download

1. Is there a Data Used to Track You box? Is Health & Fitness in it?
2. Under Data Linked to You, what purposes are listed next to Health & Fitness and Photos?
3. Does anything health-related appear under advertising purposes?
4. Tap the privacy policy link. Does it name the companies behind "Analytics" or AI features?
5. After installing, check App Privacy Report in a week.

Common questions

Does Apple check that privacy labels are accurate?

The label itself says the information has not been verified by Apple. Developers are responsible for keeping it accurate, and Apple provides definitions and guidance for completing it.

Is "Data Linked to You" bad?

Not by itself. Any app that syncs your data to an account will link it to you. What matters is the purpose and whether anything is used for tracking or advertising.

What if an app says "Data Not Collected" but asks me to sign up?

Ask the developer, or read the privacy policy closely. An account usually involves at least an email address.

Do privacy labels show which AI services an app uses?

No. Labels show data types and purposes, not company names. Check the privacy policy for AI providers.