Chinese Government Chastises App Developers For User Privacy Violations

In December 2019, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a list of 41 mobile apps that still have problems handling sensitive user data.

The agency threatened to jump in with harsh penalties if these companies did not correct the problems by December 31. Major players such as Xiaomi and Tencent were included on the list, which cited issues ranging from illegal collection and use of personal user information, unreasonable requests for user permissions, and making it too difficult for users to cancel their accounts.

Just one month earlier, we sent a notice to our clients about sudden changes to the laws about how privacy policies are handled and presented to the user.

These recent new laws could signal more regulations are on the way in 2020 as the government is expected to bring some clarity and consolidation to privacy laws in the coming months. The experts at AppInChina continue to stay on top of these regulations to inform our clients how to remain fully compliant with Chinese law.