US 12,093,336 B2
System and method for ethical collection of data
Brandy Walsh, Fayetteville, AR (US); Geri Paquette, North Little Rock, AR (US); Todd Thomas, Little Rock, AR (US); and Bryan Donovan, Holden, MA (US)
Assigned to Acxiom LLC, Conway, AR (US)
Filed by Acxiom LLC, Conway, AR (US)
Filed on Sep. 12, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/942,783.
Application 17/942,783 is a division of application No. 17/281,088, granted, now 11,526,572, previously published as PCT/US2020/037491, filed on Jun. 12, 2020.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/884,025, filed on Aug. 7, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2023/0004616 A1, Jan. 5, 2023
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 16/955 (2019.01); G06F 16/9032 (2019.01); G06N 20/00 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/9566 (2019.01) [G06F 16/90332 (2019.01); G06N 20/00 (2019.01)] 7 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computerized system for ensuring the ethical collection of data, comprising:
a personal data provider server configured to collect personal data through a plurality of data collection websites, wherein each of the plurality of data collection websites is configured to receive personal data from consumers, and further wherein each of the plurality of data collection websites is associated with one of a plurality of data collection uniform resource locators (URLs);
a marketing services provider (MSP) server configured to receive a review URL from among the plurality of data collection URLs from the personal data provider;
a URL database in communication with the MSP server, wherein the URL database comprises a plurality of assessed URLs, and wherein the URL database further comprises a plurality of Boolean flags, wherein each Boolean flag is associated with each assessed URL indicating whether the website associated with the assessed URL comprises a privacy policy in compliance with legal standards, wherein each of the assessed URLs corresponds to a website about which the MSP server has previously assessed data collection practices; and
a machine learning system in communication with the MSP server, wherein the machine learning system is configured to
receive the review URL from the MSP server; and
review the privacy policy of the website associated with the review URL in order to determine if the privacy policy is in compliance with legal standards based on matching of key terms within the privacy policy with a keyword set,
wherein the MSP server is further configured to:
add the review URL to the plurality of assessed URLs in the URL database if the assessed URL does not match with one of the already existing plurality of assessed URLs; and
associate the review URL in the URL database with a Boolean flag indicating whether the privacy policy from the website associated with the review URL is in compliance with legal standards,
wherein the MSP server is further configured to, for each of the plurality of data collection URLs other than the review URL;
utilize the machine learning system to extract privacy policy components from the website privacy policy corresponding to each such one of the plurality of data collection URLs other than the review URL;
match the extracted privacy policy components from the corresponding website privacy policy against a privacy policy keyword set to determine if the website privacy policy comports with ethical data collection practices based on the presence of keywords from the privacy policy keyword set in the extracted privacy policy components;
if the website privacy policy comports with ethical data collection practices, add the each of the data collection URLs other than the review URL to the URL database and identify at least one new keyword relevant to privacy policy review found in the privacy policy of the website and add the new keyword to the keyword set if the new keyword is not already a part of the keyword set; and
if the website privacy policy does not comport with ethnical data collection practices, add each of the data collection URLs other than review URL to the URL database with an associated Boolean flag or a calculated score indicative of the level of unethical data practices for the website privacy policy.