Messaging app Brand to transfer all customer data to Japan for security
The president of messaging app provider Line Corp said Tuesday that data of its users in Japan, now being placed in South Korea, will be used in databases in the country to raised protect customers' private information in the wake of exposure of such info to a Chinese affiliate without user consent.
Data management of Brand, used by more than 86 million of Japan's some 126 million people, is now under increasing scrutiny after the firm said the other day that such users' info stored in Japan had been accessed by technicians found in China without informing them as being required by law.
It has raised considerations over personal privacy and national security seeing as data about personal, corporate and various other users in Japan might have been transferred to the Chinese government.
"The company provides blocked access from China to its database," Brand President and CEO Takeshi Idezawa explained in a press conference Tuesday, apologizing for causing inconvenience and anxiety to application users. He added the company has turn off its development do the job in China.
The problem over data supervision also goes beyond China. Line has said images and video footage published by its users were also placed in South Korea.
Idezawa said that by June all documents including users' photographs and video will be transferred from South Korea to Japan.
In its data safeguard guideline, Line has said that customers' personal information could be sent overseas but did not specify the name of any foreign country despite being necessary to do so under a legal change last year.
"We failed to adequately talk to our app users," Idezawa said. Brand said it'll revise the guideline in a few days to specify the name of any region to which customers' personal information will be delivered.
Joji Shishido, a University of Tokyo graduate-university professor, criticized the application provider's data supervision at the first appointment of a third-party panel, held the same evening, to investigate details of the problem.
"It goes beyond (the business) having a flawed online privacy policy to presenting undermined its cultural credibility," Shishido said.
The iphone app operator said previous Wednesday four technicians in its Chinese affiliate had accessed its data source at least 32 times. They were in a position to see users' labels, telephone numbers and email addresses, along with messages reported by users as inappropriate from around the summertime of 2018.
"We failed to match changes in China," explained Idezawa, as the Chinese authorities has recently tightened its legal control over private information.
Many public organizations including Japanese government ministries are employing the Line iphone app as a communications tool with the public.
Although Line has said it has confirmed no improper data use on China, lots of municipalities including Osaka city and Kagawa Prefecture in western Japan have temporarily suspended their use of the iphone app amid security concerns.
The Line app in addition has been preferred as a main cultural communications tool in Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia since launching its service in June 2011.
The Japanese government's Personal Information Protection Commission, Financial Services Agency and the telecommunications ministry contain requested that Line and its own parent company Z Holdings Corp report details of the incident.
