Personal info to get better protection in draft law

Email addresses and information about a person's whereabouts will be considered personal information under a newly released draft law.

The draft section on personal rights in the civil code was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, for a third review on Aug 22.

In the second version of the draft, personal information included an individual's name, birthdate, identity card number, fingerprints, home address and phone number.

"We decided to add the email address and whereabouts as personal information this time after some NPC Standing Committee members, government department officials and specialists pointed out the two categories of information could also be helpful to identify or recognize a person," Shen Chunyao, from the NPC Constitution and Law Committee, said when explaining the latest draft to legislators on Thursday morning.

Meanwhile, the new draft further specifies the definition of privacy as the private space, activity or information that a person does not want others to know.

Given that some hotels were found harming people's privacy by installing cameras in guest rooms, the latest draft also stresses that no organization or individual could search, enter, peer into or shoot others' private space, such as hotel rooms.

Privacy leaks and infringements of personal information have been two big targets for which the country has strengthened efforts to fight in recent years, especially after the leak of such information leading to economic loss or even death. For instance, Chen Wenhui, the ringleader of a telecom fraud gang blamed in the death of a young student in Shandong province, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017. One of the crimes Chen was convicted of was defrauding the student of her tuition for college, which led to her committing suicide.