Title
Limiting data collection in application forms: A real-case application of a founding privacy principle
Abstract
Application forms are often used by companies and administrations to collect personal data about applicants and tailor services to their specific situation. For example, taxes rates, social care, or personal loans, are usually calibrated based on a set of personal data collected through application forms. In the eyes of privacy laws and directives, the set of personal data collected to achieve a service must be restricted to the minimum necessary. This reduces the impact of data breaches both in the interest of service providers and applicants. In this article, we study the problem of limiting data collection in those application forms, used to collect data and subsequently feed decision making processes. In practice, the set of data collected is far excessive because application forms are filled in without any means to know what data will really impact the decision. To overcome this problem, we propose a reverse approach, where the set of strictly required data items to fill in the application form can be computed on the user's side. We formalize the underlying NP Hard optimization problem, propose algorithms to compute a solution, and validate them with experiments. Our proposal leads to a significant reduction of the quantity of personal data filled in application forms while still reaching the same decision. Privacy principle; Limited collection; Automated form filling.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/PST.2012.6297920
PST
Keywords
Field
DocType
business forms,computational complexity,data privacy,decision making,optimisation,security of data,NP hard optimization problem,application forms,feed decision making processes,personal data collection limiting,personal loans,privacy directives,privacy laws,privacy principle,social care,taxes rates
Approximation algorithm,Data collection,Computer science,Computer security,Service provider,Data breach,Information privacy,Optimization problem,Privacy laws of the United States,Computational complexity theory
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.37
8
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nicolas Anciaux114822.93
Benjamin Nguyen220.37
Michalis Vazirgiannis33942268.00