The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered the rectification of 1,336 APPs-to
strictly investigate the illegal collection of personal information
Economic Daily · China Economic Net reporter Huang Xin
While new technologies continue to give rise to new products, new models, and new business formats, some APP infringements on user rights are also emerging. Rectification of illegal apps is a top priority.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will increase its efforts and continue to carry out a special rectification action for six months from the beginning of 2021, and severely deal with enterprises and apps that have failed orders, incomplete rectification, recurring problems, and engage in technological confrontation.
At the National App Personal Information Protection and Supervision Conference held recently, Lu Chuncong, deputy director of the Information and Communication Administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that since the launch of the special rectification action for APP infringement of user rights and interests, 440,000 apps with a high usage rate of domestic users have been completed. For the technical inspection work, 1,336 apps that violated regulations were ordered to rectify, 377 apps that failed to be rectified were publicly notified, and 94 apps that refused to be rectified were removed from the shelves.
“App supervision has achieved significant results in stages, but there are still some problems that have not been completely resolved. Some companies have buckled, obstructed, and deliberately delayed in the rectification process, and need to increase rectification efforts.” Liu Liehong, Deputy Minister of Industry and Information Technology Say.
It is understood that the special rectification action will be extended for another six months to the middle of next year.
Responsibility is not in place
Lu Chuncong said frankly that during the special rectification action, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has conducted key inspections and made requirements on apps with large downloads and high usage rates for many enterprise users, such as Alibaba, Sina, Bytedance, Tencent, Baidu, Netease, and Xiaomi. , The vast majority of enterprises completed the rectification on time, and actively participated in the formulation of various standards and system platform construction.
However, some companies still have problems after many rectifications, and some top corporate apps have problems such as ideological disregard, fluke psychology, and even technical confrontation in the rectification of personal information protection.
“Some companies can’t find the management or the management shirk each other. At present, 120 companies’ APP problems have repeatedly appeared more than two times. For example, Sina Sports, a subsidiary of Sina, has a problem of illegal collection of personal information. Still find the same problem." Lu Chuncong said.
In addition, the inspection also found that small and medium-sized APP development companies have insufficient rectification and response capabilities, and have management shortcomings, technical reform shortcomings, and experience shortcomings, which have become the focus of governance.
"Part of the application distribution platform's main responsibility is not in place." According to Lu Chuncong, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology conducted random tests on the apps on the market on eight major distribution platforms including Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO, and found that there is a lack of main responsibility, Issues such as inadequate information clearly stated and inducing users to download.
"Some companies have repeated problems with multiple product lines, reflecting that the company has not formed a red line awareness of user personal information protection and has not established a complete management mechanism. There are also companies that are unwilling to cooperate with rectification because rectification will affect revenue. These problems require Only when the top leaders of the enterprise pay attention to it can be solved." Liu Liehong said, it is necessary to pay close attention to the key enterprises that have recurring problems and are named and notified. Strict measures such as punishment and credit management.
At the meeting, Ant Group CEO Hu Xiaoming, Suning Holding Group Chairman Zhang Jindong, Xiaomi Group President Wang Xiang, iQiyi CEO Gong Yu, 360 Chairman and CEO Zhou Hongyi, Sina Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei, Kuaishou CEO Su Hua, Bili Bilibili Chairman and CEO Chen Rui, Didi President Liu Qing, Ali Group Chief Risk Officer Zheng Junfang, Baidu Group Party Secretary Liang Zhixiang and other major representatives of 11 Internet companies have made a public and solemn promise to the society to strictly implement APP infringement of users All rights and interests rectification work to protect the legitimate rights and interests of users.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also stated that the special rectification action for APP infringement of user rights, which was originally scheduled to end in December 2020, will be extended for another six months to mid-2021.
Three major issues are more prominent
In July of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting Special Rectification Actions for App Infringement of Users’ Rights and Interests", urging relevant companies to strengthen APP personal information protection, and timely rectification and elimination of illegal collection and use of user personal information, harassment of users, deception and misleading users, applications Distributing platform management responsibilities are not in place and other outstanding issues, to purify the APP application space.
It also requires that the national APP technology testing platform management system be launched before the end of August 2020, and the testing work covering 400,000 mainstream APPs will be completed before December 10.
"APP personal information protection and governance work is arduous and complicated, involving multiple links such as APP operation and development, mobile application distribution platforms, SDKs (software development kits). In the previous nine batches of centralized inspections conducted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, personal information was collected in violation of regulations, Three problems such as illegal use of personal information and mandatory claims are prominent, accounting for 32%, 20%, and 21% respectively." Lu Chuncong said.
In this regard, Yang Fan, President of Zhongcheng Think Tank, analyzed that my country’s mobile application industry has the characteristics of "large amount of software, small enterprise scale, wide release channels, and fast version update." Therefore, it is used in various new applications and services such as APP and mini programs. While constantly emerging, there are also problems of uneven mobile application quality, widespread cracking and tampering, and chaotic distribution channels. Many APP companies use this to make profits.
In addition, a large number of third-party distribution platforms tampered with genuine apps, added SDK for illegal collection of information and then packaged them twice, resulting in the theft of user privacy and theft of bank card funds.
"APP personal information protection is facing two challenges." Lu Chuncong said, one is the challenge of business model transformation.
The Internet industry in my country generally adopts the "front-end free and back-end profitable" model, and the profit model has changed from online advertising to targeted push and precision marketing based on big data.
The cost of corporate violations is low, and the ability to protect personal information is uneven. For profit-seeking, violations of user rights and interests occur from time to time. At the same time, gray and black products are also accelerating the collection and use of illegal personal information and even illegal trading of personal information.
The other is the challenge of frequent iteration of APP versions.
The total number of APPs on the shelves in my country has exceeded 3.5 million. The head application is updated frequently, and versions are updated almost every two weeks. Small and medium-sized applications are emerging one after another. New technology applications are equipped with online iterative "hot update" functions, and the total number of APPs is constantly increasing .
The huge number of apps and rich application scenarios require increased supervision and inspection and technical testing capabilities.
Build a comprehensive governance system
According to reports, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been actively promoting the construction of a national APP technology testing platform.
In terms of depth, the proportion of automated test items for a single APP was greatly increased to achieve full-body inspection; in terms of breadth, the ability to automatically obtain APP and batch processing was comprehensively improved to achieve comprehensive coverage.
It is necessary to integrate the technical testing capabilities of leading companies, and strive to have the annual testing coverage of 1.8 million models in 2021.
Liu Duo, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, introduced that the national APP technology testing platform management system was officially launched in July this year for trial operation, completing the original construction target ahead of schedule.
Up to now, the platform has provided public services to more than 700 companies and provided effective technical support for special rectification actions.
In addition, the platform has also strengthened its connection with the application distribution market, further enhancing the breadth and depth of platform automated testing.
At present, it has completed the localized deployment of many detection engines such as Baidu, Bangbang, Qi Anxin, 360, etc., and started the docking work with application distribution platforms such as Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, and pea pod.
It is expected that before the end of this year, the platform will achieve full coverage of mainstream distribution channels, completely change the past manual inspection methods, the proportion of automated inspections will increase to 30%, and the annual automated inspection capacity will reach one million.
At the meeting, Xie Yi, secretary general of the Telecommunications Terminal Industry Association, also announced the 10 standards of the "App User Rights Protection Evaluation Standards" and the "Minimal Necessary Evaluation Norms for the Collection and Use of Personal Information by APP" 8 standards, involving faces, address books, location, Pictures, software lists, equipment, video information and other aspects will provide clear and standardized requirements for corporate compliance operations, and provide basis and support for governance.
Liu Liehong said that in the next step, APP personal information protection must improve its political position and adhere to the people-centered approach; improve the policy system and adhere to governance according to law; formulate a standard system and adhere to standardized governance; strengthen the integration of technology and management, adhere to scientific and technological governance; strengthen overall planning Coordination, adhere to linkage governance; promote industry self-discipline, adhere to source governance.
Huang Xin