As the country fights against personal information leaks, a small group of university students in Beijing decided to take the matter into their own hands, in a bid to safeguard the public interest.

Zhang Mengyi, a law school student at the Communication University of China, and three of her classmates are embarking on an experimental project to create a report in 2013 that will show the development of China's personal information protection laws.

"I used to receive spam e-mails, mostly for real estate and shopping promotions, which really annoyed me, since I had to delete them over and over again," said Zhang, the team's coordinator.