Chinese internet users, with a fast-growing sense of privacy, have launched a broad campaign against internet companies for failure to protect their personal information online or misusing that data, and recent signs indicate the fight is gaining momentum.
Just in the past week or so, a growing outcry among internet users over privacy concerns has drawn responses from all the top three domestic internet companies - Baidu Inc, Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Group Holdings - which apologized for their wrongdoing and clarified their stance on personal data protection.
Baidu became the latest of the three on Monday to issue a response to widespread accusations of privacy invasion. In a lengthy statement, the search engine dismissed claims by a consumer rights group in East China's Jiangsu Province, saying its apps have not been monitoring users' communications or collected personal data without the users' consent.
"Baidu apps would not and do not have the capability to monitor phone calls," reads the statement, which was sent to the Global Times on Monday. It added that neither iPhones nor Android phones would provide app developers with the interface or the permission to monitor phone calls.
Baidu also said the company has not collected personal data such as location, contacts and texts without users' permission, saying it needs specific permission to do so that can be revoked at any time.
Baidu was responding to a complaint filed with the Jiangsu Consumer Council, which alleged that two Baidu apps might be listening in to users' phone calls and collecting other data without permission.
Blibaba's Ant Financial on Wednesday responded to complaints of a checked-by-default option on Alipay when users clicked to check their annual spending reports and credit scores. The option reportedly tricked users into giving their data to the company without their knowledge.
On January 2, Tencent's WeChat was pressured into clarifying that it does not store users' chat histories and would not use personal data for big data analysis, after allegations spread online that the platform might be monitoring chats.
"This is a very rare thing that we have elevated the privacy issue to a national debate and drawn attention both from the industry leaders and the regulators. It's a very positive step," Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent analyst, told the Global Times on Monday.
Liu, who has been tracking the growing demand for privacy protection for years, said that recent developments could result in "real, meaningful changes at the company, industry and government levels."
Various government departments, including the Cyberspace Administration of China and Ministry of Public Security, started last year to take steps such as tighter inspection of efforts by internet companies, including the top three, to protect personal data, according to a post on the central government's website on September 25, 2017.
Liu said that though "we will always face risk of personal data breaches, such developments are conducive to reduce that risk substantially."
