Recently, Mr. Li, a citizen of Qingdao, Shandong Province, told a reporter from Workers Daily about his experience of having his account "stolen." Mr. Li said that he did not know when the password-free payment function was activated. It was not until his mobile phone received frequent bill reminders that he discovered that the platform account was stolen, and the other party spent more than 5,000 yuan through "password-free payment". He believes that this kind of operation prompt related to member safety should be set in a conspicuous position, and consumers cannot be confused and "dismissed".
Today, as digital payments become increasingly popular, the password-free payment function is favored by many consumers because of its convenience. However, while this function provides convenience, it also exposes many security risks. From the oolong incident of consumers being "exempted from passwords" to the theft cases by criminals, we are warned that we must be highly vigilant and take measures to prevent "payments without passwords" from becoming a hidden corner that infringes on consumer rights.
The original intention of password-free payment is to improve user experience and reduce cumbersome operations during the payment process. However, in actual practice, many consumers reported that they were "exempted from password protection" without knowing it, and even suffered financial losses as a result. Behind this, there are both inductive operations carried out by the platform or merchants for their own benefit, as well as consumers' lack of understanding of the risks of this function.
It is worth noting that when promoting password-free payment, some platforms often use small print prompts, default check boxes, etc., causing consumers to authorize password-free payment without knowing it. This approach obviously violates consumers' rights to know and choose. What's more serious is that when consumers realize the problem and try to cancel the function, they often face problems such as complicated operations and difficulty in finding the cancellation entrance. This undoubtedly increases the cost of protecting consumers' rights and encourages the arrogance of some criminals.
In response to these problems, we must start from many aspects and jointly weave a dense network of consumer rights protection. First of all, platforms and merchants should strictly abide by relevant laws and regulations, clearly inform consumers of the activation conditions, risks and cancellation methods of password-free payment, and provide eye-catching reminder information. At the same time, cancellation should be simplified to ensure consumers can easily turn off the feature.
Secondly, regulatory authorities should increase supervision of platforms and promptly and effectively punish violations of regulations, so as to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and market order. At the same time, we should strengthen the popularization and education of relevant knowledge, improve consumers' awareness and understanding of the password-free payment function, and help them better master usage skills and risk prevention methods.
Finally, consumers themselves should also be more vigilant and strengthen their awareness of self-protection. You should remain highly vigilant when setting a mobile phone lock screen password, downloading apps, or using public WIFI. In addition, account transaction records should be checked regularly. Once any abnormality is discovered, the police should be called immediately and the loss of the relevant account should be reported through the bank or platform, and the password should be changed in a timely manner to reduce losses.
In short, password-free payment brings convenience, but it also comes with risks. We must face up to these risks and take effective measures to prevent and respond to them. Only with the joint efforts of all parties can we ensure that our rights and interests are not infringed while enjoying the convenience brought by technology.
Wang Qi
(Rule of Law Daily)