01

 

Some of my research cases were first learned when I was interviewed by reporters. The same is true for today's topic.

 

When the People's Daily reporter interviewed me, he told a case: recently, the eggshell apartment app, which had been silent for a long time, suddenly "revived". He contacted the former user by phone and SMS, claiming that as long as he injected some funds into the fixed account, he could return the rent owed. Some netizens believe it.

 

 

"If you want to refund your money, you should pay first" is not a new trick. It is nothing more than using massive information and adopting a crowd tactic to trick one person into another.

 

Coincidentally, Wall Street English, which was deeply involved in the capital chain crisis last year, was shut down overnight, and most of the students' prepaid tuition fees were "wasted." Shortly afterwards, some students said that they received information claiming to be able to refund tuition fees, which was also a trick of "recharging before refunding". Previously, some "campus loan" platforms also had similar fraud methods requiring recharging before withdrawing money when clearing.

 

02

 

Do you know the company Eggshell Apartment? It had already closed down, and the thunder incident was very noisy at that time.

 

The eggshell apartment is self inflicted. You can be self inflicted, and many users have been saddled. Those users who were trapped never expected that the guy who killed himself would be able to trap himself again after death, which is not only very harmful, but also very insulting.

 

Obviously, the user data of eggshell apartment has been sold to black producers. We don't know who sold the user data; The data has been sold for several times, and we don't know... What we can know is that these user data finally flows into the black production.

 

This is the fact that the data has been flowing into the black industry, which has led to criminal acts. The media has intervened in the report, and we passively and helplessly know the fact that user data has been sold.

 

What if they didn't sell to black products, but only to peers? What if there is no criminal act? What if there is no media coverage?

 

As an ordinary user, personal information may have been sold many times, and we are still in the dark.

 

03

 

With regard to user data, we now have many legal protections, including the Criminal Law, the Civil Code, the Personal Information Protection Law, the Data Security Law, the Network Security Law, and so on.

 

 

 

But these laws are aimed at companies that are still in normal operation. After the company goes bankrupt or is cancelled, it seems that few people pay attention to them.

 

04

 

The emergence of such cases involves a new topic - how to deal with user data after the collapse of Internet companies?

 

Several documents and regulations clearly point out that "personal information is an important digital asset". Since it is an asset, can user data be auctioned legally and the auction proceeds used to repay debts after the enterprise enters the bankruptcy liquidation procedure?

 

Many friends may feel uncomfortable when they see here. Why do they sell our data? Can we stop it? Let's see a case:

 

There is a dating website True.com in Texas in the United States. When going through bankruptcy proceedings, it wanted to sell 43 million user information to another dating website, including name, date of birth, sexual orientation, race, religious belief, criminal record, photos, videos, contact information, etc.

 

Because the privacy policy of the website promised that it would never sell or share the personal information of members without the user's permission, the Texas government has involved about 200 Wandezhou residents intervened and blocked the sale of customer data on the grounds of private information.

 

No, the key to whether we can prevent the resale of user information is the privacy agreement we signed with the website. However, Internet companies are very clever. They usually make the privacy agreement stinky and long, and few users will read it carefully when they register.

 

I went to see it on purpose. In addition to WeChat, Internet companies including Taobao, Meituan, JD and Baidu, when the privacy agreements are all about resale of user data, just let the user know. Then we may have no way.

 

05

 

The topic we are talking about today is a new issue, so there are gaps and loopholes in the law.

 

I checked and found that only the Personal Information Protection Law implemented on November 1 last year mentioned it, but it was not clear. Other laws are not involved, at least I didn't find out.

 

 

According to the Personal Information Protection Law, when an enterprise needs to transfer personal information due to bankruptcy, the user can be informed. So the privacy clauses of Internet companies basically mean this.

 

I think disclosure is not enough. When personal information needs to be resold due to bankruptcy, not only disclosure, but also user consent should be obtained. Therefore, I hereby suggest to improve relevant laws and urge relevant APP to modify privacy terms.

 

To sum up my suggestion, the user's consent must be obtained when transferring personal information.

 

In addition, another suggestion is proposed to add such an article in the bankruptcy proceedings of enterprises: destroy user data in the view of supervision. Only after the user data is destroyed can the bankruptcy procedure be completed.

 

06

 

In view of this situation, as a vulnerable group, how can we protect our data?

 

First of all, we can't avoid the Internet service. Since we can't avoid it, we can only choose to trust big companies. Compared with small companies, large companies are always more reliable.

 

Second, remember not to provide unnecessary principles, unnecessary information and authority, and not to give them.

 

The third is to download. Remember to only go to the Internet or the app store. Don't download apps of unknown origin.

 

The last and most important point is to regularly clean up information and cancel your account when not in use. For example, if you are married on a dating website, you can cancel your account; For example, if you live in the website of renting a house, you can cancel your account.

 

Some people may have to question: Don't I have to register next time I get married or rent a house? That's too much trouble.

 

Are you afraid of trouble when you are ready to change your wife or house?

 

All privacy leaks and even fraud are almost due to two reasons: first, fear of trouble to save time, and second, greed for small gains to believe in losing the pie.