JD Finance apologises for potential user privacy infringement after customer screenshots stored online
- Out of 100 mobile apps reviewed, the consumer association identified 91 that it suspected were collecting too much data
The finance arm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has apologised for a potential user privacy infringement case after a customer posted a video on Weibo showing that the Android app for JD Finance stored user screenshots without permission.
The screenshots were filed under a folder in JD Finance, according to the video posted on Saturday, in which the user asked, “Why is JD Finance keeping a screenshot of my bank card? What you want to do [with it]?”
The company said the problem of cached screenshots was evident in 5.0.5 and later versions of JD Finance for Android and was caused by a “technical fault”, according to an official statement posted on Weibo, China’s equivalent to Twitter. “The storage of screenshots is to enable our clients to pass on images more quickly to the customer service department. As long as users do not send them to us, the cached screenshots are only saved in users’ mobile phones,” according to the statement released on Sunday. “JD Finance has never uploaded users’ screenshots or photos to our app without permission.”
The Weibo video went viral with 4.5 million views over the weekend amid deepening globally concerns over user privacy and data security. Technology companies worldwide have come under scrutiny for how they handle personal information as the rise of the digital economy means a growing number of people conduct more of their daily activities online.
A large number of smartphone apps in China are collecting an excessive amount of personal data, including user location, contact lists and mobile numbers, the China Consumers Association said in a report published in December. Out of 100 mobile apps reviewed, the association identified 91 that it suspected were collecting too much data, but did not name them.
JD Finance works with 700 financial institutions and up to mid-2018 had served 8 million small businesses and 400 million individuals, compared with Ant Financial’s Alipay which has 870 million users and handled as many as 256,000 transactions a second last year. Ant Financial is an affiliate of Alibaba Group, the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
Like Ant, JD Finance offers loans and other services online, with much of its business involving short-term lending to consumers buying goods and services on JD.com. JD Finance, which began in October 2013 as a fintech company, changed its name to JD Digital Science in December 2018, with the goal of transforming from consumer loans to a company providing tech services to businesses.
Richard Liu Qiangdong, the chief executive officer of JD.com, is the largest shareholder of JD Finance. The company reported its maiden profit in the first quarter of 2018, with earnings of 21.4 million yuan (US$3.1 million).
