Sharjah24 - AFP: China passed a sweeping privacy law aimed at preventing businesses from collecting sensitive personal data Friday, as the country faces an uptick in internet scams, leaks and concerns about tech giants abusing clients' personal information.
Under the new rules passed by China's top legislative body, state-run and private companies handling personal information will be required to reduce data collection and obtain user consent.
The Chinese state security apparatus will maintain access to swathes of personal data, however, and Beijing has long been accused of harnessing big tech to accelerate repression in the northwestern Xinjiang province and elsewhere.
The new rules are also expected to further rattle China's tech sector, with companies like ride hailing giant Didi and gaming behemoth Tencent in regulators' crosshairs in recent months over misuse of personal data.
The law aims to protect those who "feel strongly about personal data being used for user profiling and by recommendation algorithms or the use of big data in setting [unfair] prices," a spokesman for the National People's Congress told state news agency Xinhua earlier this week.
It will prevent companies from setting different prices for the same service based on clients' shopping history, a common practice among Chinese online businesses.
The law is modelled after one of the world's strictest online privacy protection laws, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
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