Minors who enroll in training courses should only collect four personal information items and take strict protective measures
According to relevant regulations such as the Personal Information Protection Law, the personal information of minors under the age of 14 is classified as sensitive personal information. Training institutions should establish specialized rules for the processing of information on minors. In the process of processing such information, the consent of the parents or other guardians of minors must be obtained, and strict protective measures must be taken.
Recently, according to reports from netizens and inspections by regulatory authorities, some children's training institutions in Shanghai have engaged in illegal and irregular behavior of excessive, compulsory, and induced collection of non essential personal information of minors when providing services.
On September 5th, a reporter from Jiefang Daily and Shangguan News learned from the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration and the Shanghai Market Supervision Bureau that regulatory authorities have lawfully interviewed multiple off campus training institutions, requiring the operating entities to comprehensively rectify, formulate and improve internal management systems to strengthen personal information protection, and effectively fulfill their personal information protection obligations. The Shanghai Cyberspace Administration has filed a case and punished a children's foreign language training enterprise with serious violations.
In August this year, more than 130 member units of the Shanghai Training Association engaged in children's training participated in the personal information protection legal education training organized by the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration in conjunction with industry regulatory departments, involving 701 stores. Under the guidance of the competent authorities, five children's training chain institutions, including Qinhan Hutong, Dongfang Children's Painting, Stan Planet, Xiaoying Star, and Angli Education, have made self-discipline commitments to protect consumer personal information rights, involving 206 stores of these institutions in Shanghai.
On this basis, the Shanghai Training Association released the "Self Discipline Initiative for Shanghai Training Institutions to Protect Consumer Personal Information" on September 5th, calling on various training institutions in Shanghai to strengthen institutional self-discipline and jointly safeguard consumer personal information rights.
The "Proposal" clearly states that before consumers officially enroll in training courses as minors, training institutions shall not collect any personal information of students without the consent or authorization of parents. Previously, many consumers were suffering from the difficulty of institutions requesting personal information during the stage of understanding educational information.
In the "Proposal", when consumers enroll minors in training courses, training institutions generally only collect four personal information: student name, student date of birth, parent name, and parent contact information, and can only be used for specific training services such as student management. This is the principle of minimum and necessity.
After obtaining necessary personal information, training institutions should fully respect the right to know and choose of consumers. When promoting point-to-point sales to consumers, they should first explain the legitimate source of consumer personal information. Without the consent of consumers, I will not use the collected personal information and will not frequently promote courses through WeChat, SMS, phone calls, and other means.
During and after the implementation of training services, training institutions should follow the principles of legality, legitimacy, necessity, and integrity to collect, store, use, and process consumer personal information, strengthen internal management and personnel training, develop and improve management systems and operating procedures, take corresponding technical and other necessary measures to ensure personal information security, prevent information leakage, abuse, theft, loss and other security risks, and fulfill personal information protection obligations in accordance with the law.
The proposal also focuses on the personal information protection issues of many training institution apps, requiring training institutions that make public commitments to proactively pop up privacy policies to remind consumers to read when they first use the app; When consumers log in to the mini program or select functions such as their city of study or training campus, the training institution does not frequently request permissions such as device information and precise location information; When consumers use the app account cancellation function, a simple and convenient operation process is provided without setting unreasonable restrictions.
The Shanghai Training Association stated that in the next stage, it will strictly follow the "Self inspection Checklist for Common Personal Information Protection Issues in Children's Training Scenarios" issued by the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration, conduct self inspection and self correction, and include the personal information protection performance of training institutions in industry evaluations.