Apps in China could no longer force users into providing excessive user data starting May 1, 2021.
A document jointly released by a group of China’s top regulators stated that apps in China could no longer force users into providing excessive user data starting May 1, 2021.
In a report on TechCrunch, a document jointly released by a group of the country’s top regulators — the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace Administration, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Ministry of Public Security — stated that apps in China could no longer force users into providing excessive personal data starting May 1.
It was a common practice in China wherein apps asked users to provide sensitive personal information and those who declined to share were often denied access.
While some of the requests were justifiable, many others were unnecessary.
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Chinese authorities laid out last December the acceptable range of data that different apps were entitled to collect, as reported on TechCrunch.
All forms of apps, said the new document, were subject to the requirements, including the increasingly popular “mini programs,” which were lite apps accessed through an all-encompassing native app such as Alipay and WeChat without the need for an app store install.
For now, the document appeared to be a guideline at best as it didn’t specify how the rules should be enforced and how offenders would be punished.
While it marked the incremental progress on data protection in China, regulators would have to keep updating the rules as people’s daily lives were becoming more linked to digital devices at a rapid rate.
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