"If you don't scan the code, it's hard to move an inch. "Ms. Wang from Pinggu District, Beijing called to complain about the problem: a few days ago, she drove out of a parking lot and was about to scan the code to pay for parking. She wanted to pay for the parking fee in cash, but found that the parking lot could only be paid by scanning the QR code. As a result, she had to wait in the car for nearly 10 minutes until her phone was turned on again and stabilized before she was able to pay the bill and leave.
This experience made her sigh: "I don't know when I started, parking, ordering, payment, etc. have to scan the code, and some only provide scan code payment services, and it seems that nothing can be done without the mobile phone;."Some have to fill in a bunch of information or pay attention to a bunch of messy *** before scanning the code to pay, which is really a headache. ”
Why did it become a "roadblock"?The reporter conducted an investigation and interview.
A few days ago, Beijing citizen Lin Ting encountered such an annoyance: on the same day, she and her friends made an appointment to go to a shopping mall for dinner, so she drove into the parking lot of the shopping mall, and when she was about to leave after eating, she found that there was a parking fee on the wall pillar near the parking space*** Lin Ting took out her mobile phone and scanned it***The result of the scan is *** interface.
You must pay attention to the mall*** to proceed to the next step, and then you must register as a member, and the information collected includes personal mobile phone number, birthday, and name. After successful registration, you can fill in the license plate number, and then pay the fee. Lin Ting recalled that when she saw that the process was so troublesome, she wanted to give up *** payment, but there was no other way to pay at the exit, and if she didn't pay attention to *** for follow-up operations, she couldn't drive out of the parking lot. In the end, she could only follow the prompts and complete the registration and information step by step before she could pay the fee and leave.
Parking payment, food ordering, power bank rental, ......Nowadays, scanning *** instead of manual service has become a daily routine, but this consumption method that should be "efficient" and "convenient and fast" has brought trouble to many consumers. The "Rule of Law**" reporter investigation found that many consumers complained that there were various problems in scanning, including: consumption can only scan the code, refuse to accept cash, and refuse to provide paper menus;Mandatory attention *** jump to the mini program;Improper solicitation of personal information from consumers;Advertisements and offers pop-up windows are frequent, and it is difficult to distinguish between real and fake.
Does the merchant force the code to scan the code for consumption infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers?Is it illegal to collect excessive information after scanning the code?If a consumer is deceived after scanning the code, does the merchant need to be held responsible?With these questions, the reporter launched an interview.
Scan the code to pay attention to operate
There are many barriers to parking payment
In recent years, Lin Ting has long been accustomed to the way of scanning the code to park, and many parking lots can only scan the code to park, and manual fees and cash charges seem to have become the "old products" that have been eliminated. However, the QR code scanning parking service, which is supposed to be a convenience app, also adds a lot of trouble to drivers.
Lin Ting complained to reporters that many parking lots have advertisements and small program pop-ups after scanning the code, and it is mandatory to register as a corresponding member to enjoy parking services, and "consent to the other party's collection of personal information such as mobile phone numbers" is often checked by default, and cannot be canceled. After parking, Lin Ting sometimes unfollows *** or blocks or deletes, but then he can always receive text messages from relevant merchants, including shopping mall discounts, product promotion, etc. "And unlike other spam text messages, this kind of text message often doesn't have a 'td' (unsubscribe) option, and there is no way to cancel it. ”
Sometimes, I really feel that the pervasive *** has become a 'roadblock code', and the originally simple parking payment behavior has been complicated. Lin heard.
Ms. Zou, a citizen of Beijing, empathized with Lin Ting's experience, and in her opinion, the wide application in the field of parking payment has brought far less convenience to drivers than trouble. Ms. Zou recalled that several times, when she scanned the code in the parking lot, the interface of "Yuan Parking Coupon" popped up, but after further clicking, she could not directly receive the coupon, but jumped into the advertising interface.
The payment of the parking lot *** A lot of advertisements will pop up after scanning, so that you can apply for a parking card, upgrade your membership, etc., and you must close at least two or three pop-up windows each time to get to the payment interface. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to scan the QR code at the exit to pay the fee, because it has had several conflicts with other drivers. Ms. Zou complained, "It's just an unnecessary burden." ”
Recently, the reporter searched on social platforms and third-party complaint platforms with keywords such as "parking payment" and "* payment", and found that there are not a few consumers who are dissatisfied with parking *** scanning code payment.
Among the hundreds of related complaints, the content included that the QR code scanning system was not intelligent and that there were duplicate charges;After scanning the code, it is mandatory to follow and register members to further operateMandatory collection of personal information, and most of them are birthdays, health conditions, address books and other information that have nothing to do with parking consumption;There are a large number of pop-up advertisements to induce consumption, etc.
Payment for ordering depends on scanning the code
Excessive collection of personal information
In addition to parking payment, the problem of scanning code ordering in the catering industry has also been criticized. Recently, the reporter visited a number of shopping malls in Beijing and Tianjin and found that most catering companies need customers to scan the code to order, some restaurants need to scan the code to pay attention to their *** before ordering, and some of them pop up eye-catching advertisements after scanning the code, the advertising type covers games, e-commerce, financial lending, etc., and some can not even be skipped.
Many consumers are dissatisfied with this. Ms. Tian from Tianjin told reporters that when she went to the restaurant to eat, many restaurants scanned the code to order, but after scanning the code, sometimes there was no dish pattern, and it was required to pay attention to the official *** must be registered as a store member. "Sometimes I ask the waiter to see the paper menu, but many restaurants say that they can only scan the code to order. ”
Ms. Wang from Beijing reported that some restaurants still have "mysteries" hidden in scanning QR codes to order food. Once she bought milk tea, she originally wanted to pay in cash after ordering a drink directly at the counter, but the clerk said that she could receive a coupon by scanning *** online ordering, and there was even a buy-one-get-one-free activity, which was much more cost-effective than ordering at the counter. "At that time, I thought, shouldn't this kind of store activity be unified online and offline?If you don't use a smartphone or your phone just runs out of battery, you have to spend a lot of money, is that really fair?”
Excessive collection of personal information after scanning the QR code also occurs from time to time.
According to reports, when Mr. Kong from Beijing was shopping in a restaurant, he found that he needed to pay attention to the merchant *** before ordering, and believed that the merchant forcibly obtained consumers' personal information, so he sued the merchant to the court, requiring it to stop infringing on the rights and interests of personal information, inform the processing of personal information, apologize and compensate for related losses. In the second-instance judgment, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court found that the relevant acts of the defendant merchant infringed on the rights and interests of consumers' personal information, and it was required to apologize in writing to the plaintiff and compensate 5,000 yuan for notary fees.
Ren Chao, deputy dean and professor of the School of Economic Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, said that "voluntary in form and mandatory in substance" may infringe on consumers' right to fair trade. This kind of consumer service method of compulsory scanning code attention violates consumers' right to fair trade to a certain extent. Consumer Rights Protection** clearly stipulates that operators shall not use standard terms and technical means to force transactions, and it is unfair to some consumers who are unwilling to scan the code to pay attention to it.
Meng Qiang, a professor at the Law School of Beijing Institute of Technology, believes that in terms of consumers' normal expectations, the purpose can be achieved by scanning the code directly, and if it is necessary to pay attention to it or even forcibly obtain personal information, it is obviously in violation of personal information protection and consumer rights protection, and fails to fulfill the necessity principle of the operator's collection and use of consumers' personal information and the obligation to fully inform and explain and seek the consent of the person being collected. The just-released Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of the General Principles of Contracts in the Civil Code stipulates that for electronic contracts concluded through the Internet and other information networks, the party providing the standard clauses can only adopt methods such as setting up checks and pop-up windows, and cannot be considered that it has fulfilled its obligation to prompt or explain. Therefore, in this case, it is illegal for the merchant to force the collection of personal information.
Excessive requests for information also increase the risk of consumer information leakage. Ren Chao said that when consumers scan the code to pay, merchants often ask consumers to pay attention to their personal information to become a member to enjoy discounts, or automatically obtain their personal information such as birthday, gender, and geographical location through the mini program. However, it is clear that this information is not necessarily related to in-store purchases, which may involve excessive collection of consumer information. Once the merchant does not keep the data properly, the consumer will also bear the risk of personal information leakage and loss. "The QR code scanning consumption model should not become a tool for obtaining users' personal information. ”
Joint law enforcement is strictly supervised
Promote businesses to operate in accordance with the law
The compulsory scanning of QR codes and the compulsory collection of personal information by merchants have attracted the attention of relevant departments.
In April 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that the code scanning payment was new**. In June 2023, in response to the problems existing in the consumption of QR codes, the China Consumers Association carried out a nationwide "consumer supervision work against compulsory attention."
Recently, some local cyberspace administrations, market supervision bureaus and other departments in Beijing, Shanghai and other places have interviewed problem enterprises and issued "scan code" consumption reminders to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Beijing and other places have also issued documents such as case analysis and compliance guidelines for the illegal collection and use of consumers' personal information by scanning QR code consumption services to regulate scanning code consumption services.
In Meng Qiang's view, ** itself is an invention for the convenience of the people, in line with the increasingly common life scenarios and needs of smart phones, and it is understandable to provide consumers with ordering services and payment services. However, while providing first-class services, merchants should ensure that the first-class services provided are safe and reliable. At the same time, merchants must make it clear that the original intention of the service is to provide convenience for consumers, and it cannot be used to deprive consumers of the right to choose the way of consumption, or to turn it into a way to forcibly collect personal information and facilitate their own business behavior.
According to the interviewed experts, the safety of ** is worth paying attention to. **Generator can be arbitrary** into *** for users to scan the code to access, criminals will viruses, Trojan programs and other **addresses into *** After the user scans the code, the mobile phone in the address book, bank card number and other information is easy to leak. At present, there is a lack of means to audit, monitor, trace and certify the best.
To this end, some experts suggest that the implementation rules of the current laws and regulations related to data security should be further clarified, and security management systems such as hierarchical and categorical authorization, legality background review of user entities, data sharing, and compliance risk control should be improved, and the punishment of the enterprises involved in violations of laws and regulations should be increased, and the abuse of enterprises' technological advantages should be strictly prevented, and the matching of rights and responsibilities should be promoted. At the same time, in view of the reality of a wide range of current application scenarios, the creation of a first-class security certification and anti-counterfeiting traceability technology system to achieve first-class generation, operation of the whole process management, plugging data security loopholes.
Ren Chao believes that the relevant regulatory authorities can establish a joint law enforcement supervision mechanism, strictly implement the use of identification standards, and reduce or prohibit the compulsory collection of user information by some businesses. In response to situations where some businesses and platforms collect or even abuse personal data against consumers' will, a long-term mechanism should be established to punish acts that infringe on consumers' rights and interests and protect consumers' legitimate rights and interests.
Meng Qiang said that if the operator infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and personal information rights in the process of providing first-class services, in addition to civil liability, according to relevant regulations, it may also constitute an administrative violation, and will be punished by the market supervision department or other relevant administrative departments, including ordering corrections, warnings, confiscation of illegal gains, fines, etc. In serious cases, it may even lead to suspension of business for rectification and revocation of business licenses. Therefore, businesses should operate in accordance with laws and regulations, take consumers as the center, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. ”
*:Rule of law**.
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