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January 5, 2018

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Alibaba’s affiliate says sorry over data

Source: Xinhua | 00:01 UTC+8 January 5, 2018 | Print Edition

Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba, has apologized for a checked-by-default option on Alipay’s an­nual bills that allowed its credit scoring system to access user data.

Alipay bills and the Annual User Footprint Report that analyzes how customers have spent their money over the past year are widely shared on China’s social media.

People tend to show off their purchasing power, especially as the new year begins, but that joy of sharing soon turned into fear and anger.

A button checked by de­fault on the landing page meant users looking up their bills automatically agreed to use Sesame Credit, the credit scoring system of Ant Financial, allowing Sesame to collect and analyze their data and share the analysis with partner institutions.

Users accused the com­pany of infringing their privacy. In response, Sesame Credit late on Wednesday apologized and immediately had the default option canceled. Users who have already unwittingly entered into the agreement can de­select the service in the Alipay app.

There were more than half a billion Internet users in China by the mid­dle of 2017, and more than 90 percent use mobile payment in street stores, according to a report by China Internet Network Information Center. Many of those use Alipay.

Sesame Credit claims that more than 200 mil­lion users used Alipay to pay for over 100 public services. This has put cyber security at the top of the priority list.

According to the cyber security law, companies and online services that store user data on servers must acquire authoriza­tion from the users and make all clauses clear.

Han Zheng, a professor with Tongji University, said the incident showed how Chinese people are increasingly aware of pri­vacy issues.

“We are more willing to share our data and com­pare with people in other parts of the world, and it has been very easy for companies to collect user data, but that situation is changing now.”

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