Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle

To comply with legal requirements for personal data privacy protection, mobile App developers typically disclose their data collection practices to users through privacy policies. Researchers have proposed various methods using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze privacy policy t...

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Main Authors: YU Peihou, XU Tianchen, SUN Wenqian, CHEN Yunfang, YU Le, ZHANG Wei
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: POSTS&TELECOM PRESS Co., LTD 2024-12-01
Series:网络与信息安全学报
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.cjnis.com.cn/thesisDetails#10.11959/j.issn.2096-109x.2024084
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author YU Peihou
XU Tianchen
SUN Wenqian
CHEN Yunfang
YU Le
ZHANG Wei
author_facet YU Peihou
XU Tianchen
SUN Wenqian
CHEN Yunfang
YU Le
ZHANG Wei
author_sort YU Peihou
collection DOAJ
description To comply with legal requirements for personal data privacy protection, mobile App developers typically disclose their data collection practices to users through privacy policies. Researchers have proposed various methods using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze privacy policy texts and perform compliance checks. However, most existing studies focus on principles like transparency, openness, and legality, leaving a gap in the evaluation of the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. For this purpose, a framework called MNPD (minimum necessary principle detection) was proposed for automated compliance checking of applications from the perspective of the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. Initially, a multi-label text classification model categorized the target App based on its service type to determine the range of ‘minimum necessary information’ for different App categories. Then, prompt words were constructed to guide the large language model in extracting data collection practices of the App under its basic business functionality mode, transforming them into privacy statement triples and standardizing them. Finally, the compliance checking model conducted consistency checks on the text representation of the target App and evaluated its adherence to the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves 86.20% F1 score in the automated analysis of 101 ‘Online Audio-Visual’ Apps obtained from Huawei’s application market.
format Article
id doaj-art-b4245eb16fc54defbfa3c4879ed536c4
institution Kabale University
issn 2096-109X
language English
publishDate 2024-12-01
publisher POSTS&TELECOM PRESS Co., LTD
record_format Article
series 网络与信息安全学报
spelling doaj-art-b4245eb16fc54defbfa3c4879ed536c42025-02-08T19:00:12ZengPOSTS&TELECOM PRESS Co., LTD网络与信息安全学报2096-109X2024-12-011010912280361906Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principleYU PeihouXU TianchenSUN WenqianCHEN YunfangYU LeZHANG WeiTo comply with legal requirements for personal data privacy protection, mobile App developers typically disclose their data collection practices to users through privacy policies. Researchers have proposed various methods using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze privacy policy texts and perform compliance checks. However, most existing studies focus on principles like transparency, openness, and legality, leaving a gap in the evaluation of the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. For this purpose, a framework called MNPD (minimum necessary principle detection) was proposed for automated compliance checking of applications from the perspective of the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. Initially, a multi-label text classification model categorized the target App based on its service type to determine the range of ‘minimum necessary information’ for different App categories. Then, prompt words were constructed to guide the large language model in extracting data collection practices of the App under its basic business functionality mode, transforming them into privacy statement triples and standardizing them. Finally, the compliance checking model conducted consistency checks on the text representation of the target App and evaluated its adherence to the ‘minimum necessary’ principle. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves 86.20% F1 score in the automated analysis of 101 ‘Online Audio-Visual’ Apps obtained from Huawei’s application market.http://www.cjnis.com.cn/thesisDetails#10.11959/j.issn.2096-109x.2024084Appprivacy policylarge language modelminimum necessary principle
spellingShingle YU Peihou
XU Tianchen
SUN Wenqian
CHEN Yunfang
YU Le
ZHANG Wei
Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
网络与信息安全学报
App
privacy policy
large language model
minimum necessary principle
title Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
title_full Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
title_fullStr Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
title_full_unstemmed Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
title_short Detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the "minimum necessary" principle
title_sort detecting privacy compliance of mobile applications from the perspective of the minimum necessary principle
topic App
privacy policy
large language model
minimum necessary principle
url http://www.cjnis.com.cn/thesisDetails#10.11959/j.issn.2096-109x.2024084
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AT chenyunfang detectingprivacycomplianceofmobileapplicationsfromtheperspectiveoftheminimumnecessaryprinciple
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