The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology plans to stipulate that APPs cannot update themselves without the user's consent

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News on April 26: Today, it was learned from the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that in order to strengthen the protection of personal information of mobile Internet applications (hereinafter referred to as APP) and standardize APP personal information processing activities, under the overall guidance of the State Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Administration for Market Regulation and other departments have drafted the "Interim Provisions on the Protection and Management of Personal Information of Mobile Internet Applications (Draft for Comments)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Draft").

The draft opinion states that users should be informed of the personal information processing rules covering the subject, purpose, method, type, and retention period of personal information processing through pop-up windows, text links, attachments, and other concise, obvious, and easily accessible methods on the APP login and registration page and when the APP is first run.

User consent should be obtained by means of a non-default check box.

It is worth mentioning that the "Draft Opinion" points out that APP third-party service providers shall not perform wake-up, call, update and other actions on their own without the user's consent or in the absence of reasonable business scenarios.

At the same time, the collected user personal information shall not be shared or transferred without the user’s consent.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that it is now soliciting public opinions, and the opinions must be fed back before May 26, 2021.

It is worth noting that not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also reported 138 apps that infringed on user rights and interests, and urged five app stores to rectify them.

In the first quarter inspection of 2021, the number of problems found in Tencent App Store, Xiaomi App Store, OPPO Software Store, Huawei App Market and vivo App Store accounted for 14.22%, 13.81%, 12.80%, 11.37% and 11.17% respectively.

There are problems such as lax review of listings, incomplete cleanup of existing problems, inaccurate registration and verification of APP developer and operator information, and misleading users to download.