Most respondents say personal info over-collected: Survey

BEIJING -- Nearly four out of five respondents to a survey recently conducted by the China Youth Daily said their personal information had been over-collected.

Among the 1,971 respondents, 66.1 percent said many smartphone applications can not be used without the authorization of their personal data.

In the survey, respondents said information such as mobile phone numbers (60.1 percent), address books (53.1 percent), ID numbers (47.6 percent) and locations (46.1 percent) had been collected excessively.

To prevent excessive information collection, 61.3 percent of the respondents suggested people should not casually fill in forms or submit personal information; 59.2 percent advised people to carefully read app permissions, user agreements or privacy policies; and 55.2 percent said people should strengthen their awareness of privacy protection.

Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law research center at the China University of Political Science and Law, suggested people should regularly clear their records on both computers and mobile devices.

Efforts have been made to protect personal information. This year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology notified the public of five groups of applications that violated users' rights and interests.