Conveniences of technology shouldn’t come at expense of privacy and security
Print Edition
Recently, a friend recommended to me a mobile app called Wochu, through which users can order raw foods, such as vegetables and meat, and then have their purchases delivered right to their doorsteps.
For many white-collar workers who are too busy to shop for groceries, this app seems to be an ingenuous invention. Isn’t it nice to have fresh vegetables, culled chicken and gutted fish brought to you instead of going to, say, a local wet market?
In the past, wet-market shopping was a daily routine for housewives and the elderly. Now this mundane task looks likely to be at least partially supplanted by Wochu and other high-tech services.
This indicates the degree to which the so-called “Internet mentality” has suffused Chinese society. Indeed, this mentality has revolutionized our way of life, and the most typical example of this is the e-commerce industry, where mobile payments are increasingly becoming a dominant form of transaction.
According to Xu Hui, general manager of Microsoft Customer Service & Support, Greater China Region, in 2014, for which statistics were last available, 540 million of China’s 650 million Internet users get online through mobile devices including handsets and tablet computers.
Speaking at a recent forum held at Fudan University’s School of Management, Xu noted that of the 91.2 billion yuan (US$13.86 billion) in sales reported by Taobao and Tmall on November 11 (an annual online shopping “holiday” known widely as “Single’s Day”), 68 percent came from transactions made via mobile devices.
“I have high hopes for the future of mobile payment in China,” said Xu.
In his speech, professor Chen Yuxin who teaches business at New York University Shanghai also acknowledged the potential of mobile payment. In addition to enhancing efficiency, he said, mobile payment can compensate for gaps and inadequacies in the traditional financial infrastructure. Such gaps can be seen in, among other things, the low credit-card penetration rate in China’s third- or fourth-tier cities.
Extensive concerns
Indeed, figures released this year by online payment service provider PayPal stunned many when they showed relatively poor regions like southwestern Yunnan and Guizhou provinces beating Shanghai and Beijing in terms of online payments in 2015.
In Chen’s view though, this was hardly a surprise, since mobile innovation has already helped fill financial-service voids in places like rural Africa.
Although mobile payment is all the rage, the proliferation of start-up Internet companies has also raised some serious questions. In particular, should there be legal and ethical limitations to how far they can go in this supposed free-for-all?
Former veteran newspaperman Qin Shuo cited a certain mobile app created to gauge the age of users. By scanning one’s facial features with handsets, one can get an idea of how old he or she “looks.” This may be fun and amusing at first sight, but concerns about privacy are sure to arise, said Qin.
“Without seeking our consent or notifying us of possible risks of identity theft, Internet companies infringe on our privacy to draw portraits that amuse us. But do we give them permission (to do so)?” he asked.
His and similar doubts about privacy come down to the sensitive question of how innovation can be compatible with better protection of privacy and human dignity in the Internet age. We have so glorified Internet businesses these days that moral considerations are sometimes ruthlessly cast aside, Qin noted.
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