China is taking action to ensure big data security and to crack down on illegal usage, the Economic Information Daily reported on Friday.
The government will focus on big data collection, storage, application, transmission and destruction among others, in a bid to ensure security and privacy.
Insiders said one of the centers of the ongoing regulative actions was to categorize data collecting activities into legal and illegal ones. The former will be properly supervised and the latter will be banned.
With a netizen population of up to 100 million, China is facing risks in data leakage concerning privacy and security, which will happen anytime and anywhere during online shopping, payment, email exchanges, chitchat and information storage, etc.
Guo Qiquan, the chief engineer from China's network security authority, pointed out that on the one hand, the concentration of big data provides convenience for illegal stealing activities, on the other hand, some enterprises over-collect citizens' private information for commercial use.
"For example, when you purchase online, big data technologies of some platforms will collect your private information through your online activities, such as identities, phone numbers, addresses, online search footprints, real-time location and social profiles," Guo said.
Hu Guangjun, another official from China's security authority, said that the government would put more emphasis on the checking of internet enterprises on related issues.
Statistics from Gemalto, a company focusing on digital security, showed that only in the first half of 2017, the data that was stolen reached 1.9 billion pieces, 10.5 million per day on average, exceeding that of 2016.
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