Beijing internet court rules against Tencent, ByteDance in user data infringement cases
- The two court rulings come amid Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on overzealous collection of user data by the country’s operators of internet and tech services
- China has the world’s largest internet population, with more than 900 million users, but there are rising concerns about how their personal information is being used
A Beijing court has ruled against Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings and ByteDance, owner of short video apps Douyin and TikTok, for misuse of user data amid rising concerns among Chinese netizens over their data privacy.
A user surnamed Huang filed the lawsuit against Tencent in May last year, arguing that the company violated their personal information and privacy by allowing its reading app WeRead to access the user’s friend list on WeChat, a separate social media and do-everything app, and share information about the user’s reading habits with their WeChat friends, according to a report by People’s Daily.
The Beijing Internet Court ruled last Thursday that Tencent shared the user’s personal information without their consent and ordered Tencent to stop sharing the information across the two apps as they were separate and should not share the same friend list. Tencent was also ordered to pay 6,600 yuan (US$946) as compensation to cover the plaintiff's notary fees.
However, the court said Tencent did not violate the user’s privacy as information about the user’s reading list did not fall under that category.
Tencent said it “respects the ruling of the court” and that it has modified the features on WeRead following the lawsuit to emphasise the social feature on the app. “It has always been the primary principle of WeRead to ensure information security for users,” Tencent said in a statement on Tuesday.
In the case against Douyin, a user surnamed Ling filed a complaint that said after registering a new account on the TikTok sister app, they received recommendations for “people you may know”. However, there were no other names in the contact list on the user’s phone.