China’s transport ministry on Friday tightened current rules governing how online ride-hailing firms should handle and share their data with controllers, a day after Didi Global was fined $1.2 billion for illegally collecting and processing data.
The new measures are an update of parallel rules publicized in 2018 and give the government more control over data collected by these private companies.
Data generated by ride-hailing platforms cannot be used for commercial purposes, must be stored for at least two years in China, associated so six months formerly, and it cannot be exported or shown to outside entities without regulatory authorization.
The measures issued on Friday also signal tighter regulatory scrutiny from the transport ministry.
“Periodically carry out security investigations, promptly rectify security risks and loopholes discovered, establish and complete a whole-process data security management system, and take necessary measures to prevent data from being tampered with, destroyed, leaked, or illegally acquired or illegally used,” read one of the measures.
The new rules come at a time when prospects are on the rise that ride-hailing giant Didi Global’s apps might be permissible to return to app stores and continue new user registrations.
The company was fined $1.2 billion on Thursday, finishing a year-long probe that forced the ride-hailing leader to delist from New York within a year of its entrance and made foreign investors wary about China’s tech sector.
Regulatory constriction from the transport ministry highlights the new normal of ranking compliance that companies like Didi have previously begun adjusting to.
In June, the proportion of orders on Didi’s platform considered compliant with regulations rose from 39.5% to 55.4% year-on-year, rendering to transport ministry data.