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TechPolicy

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

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View of the facilities of the travel services company Ctrip in Shanghai. Photo: AFP
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Chinese online travel services giant Trip.com has been ordered by a mainland court to make an exception in the application of its privacy policy after finding that the Shanghai-based company engaged in price discrimination, potentially opening the company to further legal action that could force it to change its policies for all users.

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.

The much-anticipated Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), the country’s first set of rules to safeguard personal data, was released in draft form last October and is still undergoing review.

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.

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