With reference to the sixth aspect, in a possible implementation, the data management network element obtains a third message authentication code of the first location privacy setting data, and sends the third message authentication code to the user terminal. The data management network element may independently calculate the third message authentication code of the first location privacy setting data, for example, calculate the third message authentication code of the first location privacy setting data based on a second freshness parameter or a second random value. Alternatively, the data management network element may obtain the third message authentication code of the first location privacy setting data from an authentication service network element. For example, the authentication service network element calculates the third message authentication code of the first location privacy setting data based on the second freshness parameter, and then notifies the data management network element of the third message authentication code.
With reference to the sixth aspect, in a possible implementation, when receiving second location privacy setting data from an access management network element, the data management network element updates stored location privacy setting data of the user terminal from the first location privacy setting data to the second location privacy setting data, so that another network element may obtain the location privacy setting data of the user terminal from the data management network element.