China slaps $1.18 bn fine on ride-hailing major Didi Global over national security

Read Time:1 Minute, 36 Second

The senior executive will Cheng Wei and Jean Liu Qing each fined 1 million yuan, said the regulator, reported the South China Morning Post.

CAC said in his statement that Didi committed 16 violations involving illegal data collection from drivers and passengers.

They include illegal processing 64.7 billion personal information entry over the span of seven years since June 2015, “the report said.

Chinese authorities initiated cyber security investigations to Didi, after launching an $ 4.4 billion IPO in New York in June last year.

Investigations shook investor confidence in Chinese technology stocks. Since then, several Chinese companies have chosen to register in the US,” the report said.

Didi has failed to carry out his duties to maintain cyberspace security, data security, and protection of personal information that brings serious risks to national cyberspace security and data security,” regulators said.

In addition, even with clear orders from the regulatory authority to fix the problem, Didi failed to make a comprehensive and in -depth improvement. The nature of the violation was terrible,” he added.

After cracking down on large internet companies such as Alibaba and Tencent, China is now reflecting on regulations that seek to classify online data based on interests such as national security.

Didi was found to have illegally collected nearly 12 million photo information from the user’s cellphone, 107 million face recognition data entries, 53.5 million age data entries, 16.3 million job data entries, and 1.4 million data entries about family relations.

With hard action in internet companies, China has also tightened the rules for developing cellular applications with tighter requirements for data content and protection.

With rapid development and wider use of cellular applications, new situations and problems continue to emerge, which requires (rules) to be revised and improved to adapt to new developments,” said Chinese cyberspace administration last month.China will soon form a classification and protection management system for hierarchical data.