Following reports by state broadcaster China Central Television on the rampant underground sex trade in Dongguan of south China's Guangdong Province, on February 9, many people were intrigued to find out where the "customers" and prostitutes are from by observing popular destinations that people left Dongguan for on Baidu's migration map. This triggered many people to voice concerns whether or not their own travel routes were being collected and recorded by Baidu's migration map.

Baidu immediately responded by issuing a statement on its official microblog, saying that location data had been collected from hundreds of thousands of apps using Baidu LBS services, but that the data had also been made untraceable by stripping any personal identifiers from it.

While people feel reassured, at least for now, about any perceived privacy risks caused by Baidu's location services, it has become clear that the era of big data may endanger privacy even more than the Internet did in the past.

"I feel that my personal data are being collected without my permission and manipulated by other people all the time," Du Kai, a resident in Beijing, told Legal Daily. "My search queries have been exploited to the extent that within half an hour after I search for a certain product, advertisements for similar products will appear on the Web page of my microblog."

Some people even pessimistically deny the possibility of fully protecting one's privacy in the big-data era.

Wang Yue, founder of MTrend Group, an Internet industry consulting firm based in Beijing, told China National Radio that the leaking of users' information occurs as soon as one starts to surf the Internet. He warned that when even banks and telecom companies cannot keep their clients' information safe, regular Internet companies, however circumspect, cannot ensure safety of personal data.

Wang said that, in the future, people will become used to the fact that their data are collected and sold without their knowledge and that they receive some free or inexpensive services provided through the use of big data in return.

Companies that have been collecting and analyzing big data, such as Baidu, are almost unanimous in emphasizing the anonymity of their datasets. However, in cases where these companies fail to safely store personal information, the consequences can be disastrous.

On December 21, 2011, a text file with information on 6 million users of the Chinese Software Developer Network (CSDN), allegedly the country's largest network for programmers, was leaked on the Internet. The information included user names, passwords, and e-mail addresses, some of which were also used for online shopping, dating, gaming, social networking, and even financial service websites.

Some CSDN members continued to fall victim to the theft of their account deposit at shopping websites, even after the suspected hacker was arrested the following February, as their information was illegally sold to other cyber criminals.

New legal frontier

Zhang Xinsheng, Secretary General of the China Institute of Communications, said that in countries with a more advanced development of big-data technologies, laws on protecting privacy in the new context have already been promulgated, which entail the full responsibility of companies using big data when their use causes privacy leakage.

However, some scholars argue that although necessary in the long run, the conditions for introducing legislation on big data are immature in China.

"The development of big data will take a long time. While many legal issues still face raging debates, it is too early to adopt a law on this matter. Right now China needs a personal information protection law more urgently," said Zheng with the Communication University of China.

Zheng emphasized that the personal information protection law should address issues like to what extent individuals own their personal information, whether the "notice and consent" principle in protecting privacy can be upheld and how individuals should resort to the legal aid when their privacy is violated.

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