Comment on "Personal data guidelines to be released"(China Daily, April 6)

I am a student from the United Kingdom, studying on a one-year exchange at Hong Kong University. I am writing concerning the news report published in your newspaper stating the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been working on guidelines to be released this year aimed at tackling the problem of online privacy in China. This has undoubtedly become a major problem: For example, 7K7K, a games site, reportedly had the data of 20 million users stolen after being hacked.

These guidelines are far from enough to protect Internet users to a satisfactory level. Litigation lawyers are seeing a significant rise in the number of cases in this area. This has an effect not only in China: in the United States, 26 percent of federal securities class-action lawsuits filed in the first half of 2011 were brought by investors in China-based companies. The primary problem with the guidelines is that they are non-binding and so there is no punishment for non-compliance. Thus, there is little impetus for enforcement.

Another problem with the guidelines is they are very vague. For example, personal information is defined incredibly broadly. The lack of details leaves many questions unanswered, and seems to make the requirements of the regulations stricter than legislation in other countries.

The only redeeming point is that the guidelines are intended to be a draft awaiting implementation of further laws.

Caitlin Forsyth, via e-mail

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(China Daily 05/02/2012 page9)