TeleGapper：Telegram小程序隐私政策的（不可靠性）研究
TeleGapper: On the (un)reliability of Privacy Policies in Telegram Mini apps
AI总结：
本研究提出黑盒动态分析框架TeleGapper，评估278个Telegram小程序的隐私状况，发现多数小程序依赖默认隐私政策，超半数联系未披露第三方，无同意或退出机制，存在显著隐私合规与透明度问题。
AI中文摘要：
Telegram小程序是嵌入在Telegram客户端中的Web应用，在全球使用最广泛的消息平台之一中形成了第三方服务生态系统。尽管它们的应用日益广泛并可访问Telegram提供的上下文，但其隐私属性仍在很大程度上未被探索。与微信等依赖严格控制的专有执行框架的生态系统不同，Telegram采用了不同的模式：小程序在WebView内运行，结合了平台提供的上下文、标准Web功能和不受限制的出站网络。这使得应用可以通过普通Web请求将敏感信息传输给分析、广告、跟踪或其他第三方，而这些请求通常可见性有限。因此，隐私披露对于透明度至关重要。Telegram允许小程序要么定义特定于应用的隐私政策，要么依赖平台提供的默认政策。后者减轻了开发者的披露负担，但可能导致通用声明，无法准确反映单个小程序的实际数据实践。在本文中，我们提出了TeleGapper，这是一个黑盒动态分析框架，通过捕获运行时网络流量、识别第三方通信并将观察到的数据流与披露的隐私信息进行比较，来评估小程序的隐私状况。我们评估了从tApps Center（一个用于发现Telegram第三方应用的社区驱动目录）收集的278个可运行小程序。我们发现，59.4%的小程序联系了至少一个未披露的第三方，78.8%的小程序完全依赖Telegram的默认隐私政策，且没有一个小程序提供同意或选择退出机制。这些发现揭示了一个广泛使用但研究不足的生态系统中存在的巨大透明度和合规差距。
英文摘要：
Telegram Mini Apps are Web applications embedded within the Telegram client, forming an ecosystem of third-party services within one of the world's most widely used messaging platforms. Despite their growing adoption and access to Telegram-provided context, their privacy properties remain largely unexplored. Unlike ecosystems such as WeChat, which rely on tightly controlled, proprietary execution frameworks, Telegram adopts a different model: Mini Apps run inside a WebView, combining platform-provided context with standard Web capabilities and unrestricted outbound networking. This enables applications to transmit sensitive information to analytics, advertising, tracking, or other third parties through ordinary Web requests, often with limited visibility. Privacy disclosures are therefore critical for transparency. Telegram allows Mini Apps either to define an application-specific privacy policy or to rely on a platform-provided default policy. While the latter reduces the developer's disclosure burden, it may lead to generic statements that do not accurately capture actual data practices of individual Mini Apps. In this paper, we present TeleGapper, a black-box dynamic analysis framework to assess the privacy posture of Mini Apps by capturing runtime network traffic, identifying third-party communications, and comparing observed data flows against disclosed privacy information. We evaluate 278 working Mini Apps collected from tApps Center, a community-driven catalogue for discovering third-party applications in Telegram. We find that 59.4% contact at least one undisclosed third party, 78.8% rely exclusively on Telegram's default privacy policy, and none provides a consent or opt-out mechanism. These findings expose a substantial transparency and compliance gap in a widely used yet understudied ecosystem.
