Privado is an open-source static code analysis tool that detects data flows in source code, finds data security vulnerabilities, and generates accurate Play Store Data Safety Reports, built for privacy engineers, data protection and governance engineers, security engineers, and mobile app developers.

What it is

Privado is a static scanning tool written in Python and released under the LGPL-3.0 licence. It scans a codebase to discover how personal data moves through an application: it detects more than 110 personal data elements and maps each data flow from the point of collection to its "sinks," which include external third parties, databases, logs, and internal APIs. During a scan it builds a knowledge graph that answers contextual questions about sensitive data usage at scale. It runs locally on a computer or inside a CI/CD pipeline, and because the scan is local, code never leaves the machine; only the generated JSON output is optionally synchronized to Privado Cloud.

The concrete problem it solves is manual privacy reporting. Filling out the Play Store Data Safety Report normally means developers asking around the team to learn what data is collected, spending hours reading SDK documentation to see where that information gets shared, and navigating a complex form by hand. Privado pre-fills that report from the scan. The same scan produces data-flow diagrams, data inventories, and Record of Processing Activity (RoPA / Article-30) reports, replacing manual audits and spreadsheets for GDPR and CCPA obligations.

Key capabilities

• Detects more than 110 personal data elements, catalogued in docs/extra/data element list.csv.
• Maps data flows from collection to sinks such as external third parties, databases, logs, and internal APIs.
• Builds a knowledge graph during scanning that contextually answers thousands of questions about sensitive data.
• Writes results to /.privado/privado.json and shows a preview in the terminal.
• Surfaces Data Elements, Data Flow Diagrams, Data Inventory, Code Analysis, and Issues in a dashboard.
• Generates RoPA / Article-30 reports and pre-fills the Android Data Safety Report for Play Store publishing.
• Supports Java and Python in GA, with JS/TS support stated as coming soon.

Who uses it and how

• Privacy Engineers, Data Protection Engineers, and Data Governance Engineers use it to generate and maintain data maps and RoPA reports.
• Security Engineers use it to identify and remove data leaks and to find unaccounted third-party sharing of data.
• Mobile App Developers use it to pre-fill the Play Store Data Safety Report instead of manually tracing SDK behaviour.
• Teams run it locally on a developer machine or inside a CI/CD pipeline for continuous privacy monitoring.
• Results sync to the Privado Cloud Dashboard after a successful scan, sending only the JSON output, so findings can be reviewed across one or many repositories.

Getting started

Install Docker, then run curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Privado-Inc/privado-cli/main/install.sh | bash to get the Privado CLI. Clone a repository and run privado scan; results land in /.privado/privado.json.

How it compares

The facts do not name any paid products that Privado replaces, and no comparable static privacy-scanning tools are named either. On the evidence provided, it stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must have Docker installed and, for reports and visualization, create a free account to sync results to Privado Cloud, since the local output is raw JSON. General availability covers Java and Python only, so teams working mainly in JS/TS should wait or look to the vendor's enterprise offering. The README is detailed on use cases, but language support beyond those two is only stated as forthcoming, so teams needing wider coverage should confirm current support before relying on it for compliance.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Privado-Inc/privado-cli/main/install.sh | bash

git clone git@github.com:saurabh-sudo/BankingSystem-Backend.git

privado scan <source directory>