Many Hongkongers were outraged when they found out that Octopus Holdings had sold the personal information of 1.97 million customers who joined the pay card's reward scheme.
The data, which was sold for a total of HK$44 million, included telephone numbers, mailing addresses and Identity Card numbers. The Octopus Card's board says it will donate the revenue to the Community Chest.
Although Octopus Holdings now pledges to delete all non-essential personal data and stop providing information to others, Octopus cards are still used by a large number of people, including students, in their daily lives. Some have no choice but to register their personal information with the company because the cards also double as access cards to homes and registration cards at schools.
Young Post talked to some students about how the incident has made them rethink the issue of privacy.
'[Octopus] should respect people's privacy. We gave them that information for the Octopus card, not for any other reason,' says 18-year-old Samantha Ho, a student at Renaissance College. 'They shouldn't be allowed to make a profit by giving out personal details.' Samantha has held a personalised Octopus card for years.
Angela Lu, 19, also holds a personalised Octopus card and is a member of the rewards scheme. She uses the card for everything she can - her housing estate has even replaced the resident's card with Octopus.
Although Angela objects to the breach of privacy and to the use of her information to make money, she thinks not much that can be done, especially when the data has already been sold. 'I wouldn't want to go around carrying change for buses,' she says. But in the future she hopes to have a choice about the use of her personal information. 'Perhaps having a checkbox that says: Do you want information about these certain things? Are you interested in these types of offers?'