User Profile Estimation via Contact List and Server Intermediary
Solution Overview
Problem
The increasing social problem of personal information protection, particularly in the context of illegal collection and misuse, makes it challenging for service providers to collect and utilize user data without violating privacy laws, necessitating a method to estimate user profiles legally and efficiently.
Innovation Solution
An electronic device and a user profile estimating method that utilize a contact list or call list to transmit phone numbers to a server, receive company information, and estimate user profiles based on words within these lists, employing algorithms to determine user attributes such as age, occupation, and other demographic information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If service providers directly collect personal information stored on electronic devices, then data collection completeness is improved, but legal compliance deteriorates due to privacy laws requiring user consent
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a server as an intermediary between the electronic device and the service provider. The server receives contact list information from the device, processes it to generate user profile data, and returns the processed information. This intermediary approach allows the service provider to obtain useful data without directly accessing or storing sensitive personal information on the user's device, thereby maintaining legal compliance while achieving data collection goals
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a copy of contact list information (phone numbers, company names) and sends it to the server for processing. The server then generates a derived user profile based on this copied data without requiring the original personal information to leave the user's controlled environment. This copying mechanism enables data utilization while preserving privacy boundaries
2Reliability
If service providers restrict data collection to legally obtained information, then legal compliance is improved, but data collection completeness deteriorates making it difficult to collect desired information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms the parameter of data collection from direct personal information to processed user profile attributes. By changing what is collected (from raw contact data to derived user characteristics like occupation, age group, and interests), the system maintains legal compliance while achieving comprehensive data collection for service purposes
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary processing of contact list data on the server before returning it to the user's device. User profile information is pre-computed based on contact patterns, company affiliations, and communication behavior, allowing the service provider to obtain comprehensive user insights without directly collecting sensitive personal information
3Measurement precision
If user profile estimation uses contact list and company information, then estimation accuracy is improved, but system complexity increases due to multiple data processing steps
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the user profile estimation process into distinct segments: contact list extraction, company information matching, user profile generation, and result delivery. Each segment is handled by specific modules (contact list manager, server processor, profile generator), which reduces overall system complexity by creating modular, independently manageable components while maintaining high estimation accuracy
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic device is provided. The electronic device includes a memory configured to store at least one of a contact list or a call list, a communication module configured to transmit a phone number, included in at least one of the contact list or the call list, to a server and receive company information, associated with the phone number, from the server, and a control module configured to estimate a user profile using at least one of a word included in the contact list or a word included in the company information.