China considers regulating smartphone apps: report
Chinese internet watchdogs are looking into ways to regulate the country’s booming market in smartphone applications in an effort to rein in privacy leaks and malware.
Senior officials from the State Internet Information Office, an agency under the State Council charged with regulating the internet, met with local regulators in Beijing over the weekend to discuss further rules for mobile apps, Chinese media reported.
The meeting also touched upon ways in which app users could seek redress if they had been targeted by malware or if private information had been siphoned off their phones by applications, according to Zhu Wei, an associate law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.
Zhu said it was time for legal reforms as the nation’s laws lagged behind technology. “There has been a deluge of applications. Many illegal stores have their apps,” he said. “These often violate consumers’ private information and the legal rights and interests of minors. There should be a legislative effort to regulate” smartphone applications, he said.
The online application market has become a “free-for-all”, said Benjamin Cavender, a Shanghai-based analyst with China Market Research Group.
