  Privacy regulations protect and promote the privacy of individuals by
requiring mobile apps to provide a privacy policy that explains what personal
information is collected and how these apps process this information. However,
developers often do not have sufficient legal knowledge to create such privacy
policies. Online Automated Privacy Policy Generators (APPGs) can create privacy
policies, but their quality and other characteristics can vary. In this paper,
we conduct the first large-scale empirical study and comprehensive assessment
of APPGs for mobile apps. Specifically, we scrutinize 10 APPGs on multiple
dimensions. We further perform the market penetration analysis by collecting
46,472 Android app privacy policies from Google Play, discovering that nearly
20.1% of privacy policies could be generated by existing APPGs. Lastly, we
point out that generated policies in our study do not fully comply with GDPR,
CCPA, or LGPD. In summary, app developers must carefully select and use the
appropriate APPGs with careful consideration to avoid potential pitfalls.
