A public debate is still raging on whether Tencent and Alibaba, developers of popular mobile apps WeChat and Alipay, respectively, have the right to infringe on users' privacy, even after Tencent denied it stores users' chat records, and Alibaba apologized for deceiving users into authorizing it to store their data. Do we need legislation to prevent illegal access to and misuse of people's private information? Three experts share their views on the issue.
No real protection for smartphone users
WeChat said they "do not keep the chat records of users". We are not sure about that, but we are sure that they can do so whenever they want to.
A simple test will show how. If someone sends you a message while your smartphone is turned off, you will still get that message when you turn it on again. During the intervening period, the information was stored on WeChat servers.
Besides, WeChat used to publish commercial advertisements in "moments" that suited each user's habits. There is only one known way of doing that, big data analysis, which involves collecting users' information, names, addresses, spending habits ands so on and analyzing them to reach certain conclusions.
There are many P2P (point-to-point) data transferring technologies that allow one person to directly send a piece of information to another without going through any public server. But since such technologies are very costly, they can't be promoted for commercial use, at least for now.
China plans to make it mandatory for IT companies to apply for special registration if they want to put users' data to commercial use. That will help protect users' data from being misused by big technology firms for profits.
Liu Quan, a senior researcher in cybersecurity at the China Center for Information Industry Development affiliated to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
Putting IT companies' power in cage of law
In the WeChat case, the personal information given by the users could also contain facts about their family, business, profession or other sensitive matters. In the Alipay case, the annual consumption record of a user might also contain private information. And as developers of the two apps, Tencent and Alibaba are obliged to protect such information.
Yet in both cases, there is risk of information leak. Especially in the Alipay case, the users' consumption records can be passed on to Sesame Credit of Ant Financial Services Group, which is an affiliate of Alibaba. Some argue Alipay has made that clear in its electronic agreement with users, but the sentence authorizing it to analyze users' data appeared in smaller fonts and was buried under innumerable other words. Worse, its default choice was "I agree", giving Alibaba automatic authorization to analyze users' personal information.
The two cases reflect the risks personal information face in this age of mobile internet. The Constitution, the criminal law, civil law, and the tort law all have articles on this issue. The Cyber Security Law, which came into effect on June 1, 2017, also stresses that people's personal information should be protected.
Still the legislature and judiciary have to take measures to better protect people's private information. Perhaps we need a special law or amend the existing laws to regulate the internet service providers and prevent them for misusing users' data. Because of the technologies at their disposal, IT companies wield immense power, and power of any kind should be put in the cage of law.
Guo Jun, a lawyer dealing in civil and commercial cases at Jintai Law Firm
Seek users' consent to analyze their data
WeChat had 938 million users by the end of March, while Alipay had 520 million by the end of 2017. Their respective developers, Alibaba and Tencent, are both tech giants with huge influences not only in China but also in many other parts of world.
But that's no excuse for them to violate users' rights and privacy. WeChat can access users' daily chat records, while Alipay has our consumption records. If either set of information gets leaked, it could cause huge convenience to the users.
That's why Alibaba and Tencent are obliged to strictly protect users' privacy and rights. And before analyzing user's data, the two companies should obtain users' consent in a legal, proper way.
Chen Liteng, an analyst at a Hangzhou-based e-commerce research center
