Trip.com ordered to make exception to privacy policy in lawsuit that could open the door to further legal action
- A court in eastern Zhejiang province’s Shaoxing ruled that Trip.com engaged in price discrimination
- The ruling comes as the country is building a legal framework to restrict online platforms from excessive collection of personal data
The Keqiao District People’s Court in Shaoxing, a city in eastern Zhejiang province, last week ruled that Hong Kong-listed Trip.com must either allow for the plaintiff to use its services without agreeing to the platform’s privacy policy and service agreement or stop collecting unnecessary personal information.
The ruling comes at a time when the Chinese government is building up a legal framework that restricts the country’s technology platforms from excessively collecting personal data from their users.
As part of the PIPL, companies will be restricted to collecting only the minimum amount of user data needed to provide services and will be barred from practices such as price discrimination.
In the Shaoxing case, the plaintiff surnamed Hu, sued Trip.com after the company charged her 2,889 yuan (US$447) in July last year for a hotel room that should have only cost 1,377 yuan.