Tech firms in the dock over privacy concerns

Ministry calls for customer data collection process to be streamlined

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country's information technology regulator, on Friday urged the country's top technology firms to streamline their customer data collection processes amid a string of online privacy rows.

The ministry has summoned search engine Baidu Inc, fintech giant Ant Financial Services Group, and Beijing Bytedance Technology Co Ltd, operator of the popular news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, over failure to fully disclose how they collect and use the customer data generated from their mobile applications.