What are the shortcomings behind the "home economy" blowout?
Worrying about online education, app suspected of over-collecting personal information
● After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, new types of “home economy” such as fresh food distribution, online education, remote office, online medical treatment, and online games have flourished. However, while the "home economy" meets the new needs of people, the difficulties and pain points in its development cannot be ignored
● In the Internet environment, consumer rights protection faces new challenges. Consumers can only understand through the pictures displayed by the merchants when purchasing products online, which facilitates merchants to sell counterfeit goods and inferior products. Consumers will have difficulty in proving their rights and the costs of safeguarding their rights.
● Under the new business format, law enforcement officials should pay close attention to and respond to social needs, closely contact consumers, assist consumers in safeguarding their rights, and conduct more effective supervision. In addition to focusing on post-event supervision, they must also pay attention to pre-event reminders and inspections during events
□ Our reporter Zhao Li
□ Our intern Dong Jinmeng
After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, although tourism, catering, offline entertainment and other industries have been hit to a certain extent, new types of "home economy" such as fresh food distribution, online education, remote office, online medical care, and online games have flourished and flourished. Become a bright color in the current economic development.
Baidu data shows that since January 18, the overall popularity of the four major industries of online education, online medical care, online entertainment and fresh food e-commerce has increased by more than 100% from the previous month, and the demand for remote office has increased by 663% from the previous 30 days.
At present, although the "housing economy" meets some new needs of people, there are also some difficulties and pain points in development. For example, some parents of students reported that when they helped their children to use online education software, they found that some courses were not made with enough care, but simply moved offline teaching to online, resulting in discounted learning effects.
Recently, the reporter of "Legal System Daily" investigated this issue and tried to find a good way to protect consumers' rights and interests in the new business while digging out the shortcomings behind the "home economy" blowout.
Online course fisheye
Consumption disputes followed
"Many of them are copied directly from the Internet, and I feel pitted."
Seeing that the quality of the online courses he bought was getting worse and worse, Xiao Gang (pseudonym) chose to abandon this course because he "was afraid of being distorted."
Xiao Gang is engaged in self-media work in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. In order to improve his business ability, he purchased a set of online courses on network communication theory online. During the audition phase, this online course performed very well, it was entertaining and easy to understand. Unexpectedly, after the purchase, Xiao Gang was very disappointed with the quality of the course.
Guo Yu (pseudonym), a third-year student from a university in Beijing, has encountered a similar situation to Xiao Gang. "Once bitten by a snake, I was afraid of well ropes for ten years." Today, Guo Yu firmly believes that online courses of tens or hundreds of dollars cannot guarantee quality at all.
"Online courses are full of fish. After payment, once you find a problem, it is difficult to find a complaint channel." Guo Yu said, "Online courses are very poor in transparency, and there is induced consumption, just like a hammer."
Their experience is not accidental. "Legal Daily" reporters found that there are many online platforms for paying for knowledge, such as MOOCs and micro-classes, but many consumers surveyed reported that some online courses include text and video introductions, audition sections and payment after purchase. Of learning content does not match or is of poor quality.
Affected by the epidemic, many people choose to study online at home without leaving home, and online education under the "home economy" is becoming increasingly popular. However, related consumer disputes followed.
In this regard, Liu Junhai, a professor at the School of Law of Renmin University of China, believes that a feature of the digital economy is virtual scene trading. In the virtual scenario, some bad e-commerce companies have recharged the product and cut corners, resulting in online courses that are not in line with consumer expectations, or very different from the descriptions in the propaganda. Therefore, the quality of online education courses is difficult to guarantee, which requires platform parties to intervene in supervision, and transparency should be improved accordingly.
Online game goods are wrong
Rights protection is not easy to uninstall directly
Similar problems exist in online games that are under fire in the "housing economy."
Yang Yang (pseudonym) is a gamer who is also very interested in China's traditional culture.
Once, Yang Yang opened the webpage and was attracted by a game advertisement. "The beginning of a cricket, evolution depends on swallowing!" "The cricket only ranks third, and the overlord feeds on crickets" ... slogans such as these are accompanied by posters with a strong visual impact, which makes him click on game. However, after playing a few games, he found that the game was completely different from what was advertised.
There are many similar games that use "鲲" as a gimmick to attract consumers.
Li Li (a pseudonym), a senior gamer, has been deceived many times. "I don't even have a single cricket among the more than 10 cricket-raising games I tried to click in."
According to Li Li, the promotional posters for these games are generally very inflammatory, most of them are fairy games, and the gameplay is not much different from that of "Legend" more than 10 years ago.
From Liu Junhai's point of view, online games are different from other physical consumption and must be attached to online media. The content consumed by online game players is not physical, but the gaming experience in the online world. Most of the items obtained by online game players in the game are presented in a virtual form. Therefore, it is difficult to maintain the rights of online games, and the cost of maintaining rights is also high.
Because of this, many consumers surveyed said that they generally choose to uninstall these online games that are “incorrect”.
"Cloud Life" Depends on App
Suspected of excessive information collection
Under the "home economy", cloud classes, cloud cooking, cloud fitness, cloud diagnosis and treatment, cloud shopping, cloud spring tour, and other "cloud life" methods are popular. While the "cloud" days bring convenience to people, It also brought many problems. Because the "cloud life" method relies on the existence of the app, the authorization behind it is suspected of excessive collection of user personal information.
Xu Guo (pseudonym) is studying the first year of a graduate student at a university. Recently, he has frequently used various online teaching apps such as Tencent Conference, CCtalk, Rain Class and other online courses. After studying for a period of time, Xu Guo found that these online teaching apps collect a lot of personal information when using them, for example, asking for permission to access phone books, photo albums, turning on recording permissions, camera permissions, etc.
"I found on an online teaching app that if I want to register as a webmaster, I need to provide ID photos and a seemingly lengthy agreement. I do n’t know what is the use of these apps to collect information about so many people, more I do n’t know if my information will be used for other ways. This lengthy agreement clause is like buying strong and selling strong. You ca n’t use this app if you do n’t agree, but you have to use it in class, so it ’s helpless. ”Xu Guo said .
In Xu Guo's opinion, if you want to attend the class, you must authorize these apps to use the microphone and camera functions. This mandatory authorization method is no different from monitoring.
The word "authorized" was mentioned by many interviewees in an interview with the reporter of the Legal Daily.
Zhang Xia (pseudonym) currently works in Beijing. After returning to work, he downloaded an online car app for the convenience of commuting to and from work. However, this app must authorize mobile phone number, location, access to storage space and photos. If you do not authorize it, you cannot use it. These three authorizations are linked and must be selected. Zhang Xia is worried that her information will be leaked.
Their concerns are not entirely unfounded. Taking online education as an example, there are media reports that some consumers have been bombarded by telemarketing from nearly a hundred online education institutions within a month.
In November 2018, the evaluation of the personal information collection and privacy policy of 100 apps released by the Chinese Consumers Association showed that the app is generally suspected of excessively collecting personal information.
According to the Chinese Consumers Association, "authorization" is the first step for consumers to use a new app. However, in terms of collecting personal information, apps are generally suspected of excessively collecting personal information: 59 apps are suspected of excessively collecting “location information”, 28 apps are suspected of excessively collecting “address book information”, and 23 apps are suspected of excessively collecting “identity information” ", 22 apps are suspected of excessive collection of" mobile phone numbers "and so on.
On December 30 last year, a seminar on App personal information protection was held in Beijing. According to the meeting, since the establishment of the App reporting platform in March 2019, the App ’s illegal and illegal collection and use of personal information management team has received a total of 12,300 reported information from netizens, involving more than 2,300 apps.
On the same day, the State Cyberspace Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration of Supervision and Administration of the State Council jointly issued the "Identification Method for the Collection and Use of Personal Information by Apps in Illegal and Illegal Practices", which is intended to provide a reference for the supervision and management authorities to identify the collection and use of personal information by App in violation of laws and regulations Provide guidance for App operators to conduct self-examination and self-correction and social supervision of Internet users.
"All consumer behavior and economic activities on the Internet are inseparable from personal information. A core issue is to distinguish the difference between personal information and big data. Personal information belongs to the protection of privacy and belongs to users themselves; big data belongs to knowledge The scope of protection of property rights can be attributed to the platform. If the relationship between the two is mixed, and personal information and big data are conflated, it will give some bad businesses and illegal companies an opportunity. "China University of Political Science and Law Communication Law Research Center Deputy Director Zhu Wei said.
In the opinion of Qiu Baochang, president of the Beijing Electronic Commerce Rule of Law Research Society, to manage the excessive collection of user information by the App, first of all, it is necessary to further improve laws and regulations, and promptly introduce personal information protection laws, privacy laws, and so on. "The current relevant laws and regulations are still in principle. They do not stipulate the corresponding administrative, civil, criminal and responsibilities of the relevant regulatory authorities for inaction. At the same time, strict law enforcement is required."
Drafting / Li Xiaojun