Recently, some netizens found that the domestic smart TV sets in the “hook data” to collect user information. After the news came to light, Shenzhen Skyworth took the lead in issuing a statement, saying that it had completely disabled the “hookup service” and dissolved its cooperation with Beijing hookup data company. At the same time, Beijing hook data company in the statement, to the user “sincere apologies”. However, Chinese netizens do not believe that the company will abandon the business.
A week ago, we reported that Chinese netizens found that the Android system on their smart TVs was connected to the “hookup service” and scanned their connected devices every 10 minutes, and even their neighbors’ connected data was not spared, causing anxiety among netizens after the incident was exposed.
The following day, several Chinese media reported the incident and made public two statements from Skyworth TV and Beijing hookup data company. Skyworth TV issued a statement saying that it would disable the “hookup service” on all Skyworth TVs at the first time and launch a related investigation. The statement said, in view of this incident is seriously against Skyworth’s core values of user first, Skyworth’s Cool Kai Technology has issued a letter to terminate the cooperation with Beijing Hook Data Technology Co.
Violated the user’s privacy but did not receive any punishment
In response, Xing Jian, a former citizen journalist for SixFourTimes.com, said in an interview with this station this Tuesday (May 5) that China’s network surveillance is everywhere, and this time it was just caught by netizens, and he does not believe that hookup data companies have abandoned the business as a result.
“Although Shenzhen’s Skyworth TV issued a statement and admitted that the use of the “hookup service” to collect user information was a mistake that will be corrected, a number of other companies that have signed cooperation agreements with the company to use the “hookup service” have not yet The company has not issued any response. This illegal operation violates the privacy of users without any punishment, and is supported to some extent by the Chinese government.”
Meanwhile, the statement from Beijing Hook Data Technology Co., Ltd. specifically mentions that the program can be disabled by itself and that the collected user data is used for ratings research-related businesses, including household and individual ratings, ratings effectiveness analysis, advertising ratings analysis and optimization. The statement also said that the company’s user privacy policy was not clear enough, which caused some users to worry about privacy security, for which we sincerely apologize.
The public generally does not believe in stopping data collection
Mr. Song, a Shanxi legal scholar, told the station that he believes it is unlikely that Hook Data will stop collecting user data for its services, otherwise it will lose its survival value.
“Are there a lot of companies in the country like the hookup service? It’s definitely not just this one company that does this kind of thing. And the partner companies that receive hookup services, like Skyworth, aren’t there Haier, aren’t there Konka, aren’t there other brands of TV sets, so there’s no privacy protection in China.”
Ltd. has entered into a long-term partnership with Skyworth, Kukai, TCL, Changhong, Konka, Fengxing, Weijin, TV Cat, Sanyo, Toshiba, Philips and other companies to obtain smart TV data collection by implanting SDKs in the system layer.
Previously, the relevant personnel of the hook data company said in a media interview: the company has noticed the online buzz, the user response information is somewhat exaggerated, but the hook data the entire collection, data use and other processes are legal.
Shenzhen resident Zhang Hai notices this station, in addition to domestic smart TV sets, the authorities of the cell phone user data collection is more serious:.
“I saw a long time ago that domestic cell phones collect information on every person. In China, this kind of collection of personal information is the norm, and it shows that our privacy is not protected.”
According to the report, as of the first half of 2020, hook up data has jointly owned more than 138 million smart TV terminals, OTT BOX coverage of 30 million units, effective coverage of 149 million households, 457 million people, the number of other smart devices can be connected has exceeded 500 million units, data coverage of 2000+ TV channels 19000+ APK (including video, games, life, etc. ), the number of OTT on-demand programs monitored exceeds 1.8 million.
Among the above-mentioned electronics companies, only Skyworth took the lead in issuing a statement, while the rest did not respond publicly and did not indicate whether they would continue to use the hook-up data service. A number of scholars in mainland China interviewed by the media have argued that Hook Data’s actions are suspected of being illegal.
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