Ministry of Industry and Information Technology： Major Internet companies have basically solved the problem of ＂unable to shut down＂ information.

　　On November 8, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology interpreted the "Notice on Launching Awareness-raising Action for Information and Communication Services".

　　The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pointed out that at present, the "unable to turn off" information of major Internet companies (TOP100) has been basically solved, and the problem discovery rate of misleading users by "disorderly jumping" has dropped significantly to 1%. In order to further consolidate and deepen the results of the previous work and prevent similar problems from rebounding repeatedly, the Notice requires all Internet companies to set up obvious and effective close buttons in their APP opening information and pop-up information windows, so that users can "find and close" and may not use full-screen pictures, videos, etc. as jumping links to mislead users to click.

　　Attachment: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology interprets the full text of the Notice on Launching Information and Communication Service Perception Promotion Action.

　　A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on Promoting Information and Communication Service Perception (hereinafter referred to as the Notice), and decided to carry out the Information and Communication Service Perception Promotion Action (hereinafter referred to as the "524 Action") from November 2021 to March 2022. Now we will interpret the relevant contents.

　　Q: What is the background of the Notice?

　　A:At present, the global digital transformation is accelerating, and China’s information and communication industry has played an important role in promoting the high-quality development of the digital economy and improving people’s high-quality life. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as the competent department of information and communication industry, resolutely implemented the decision-making arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, adhered to the people-centered development idea, made overall plans for development and security, continued to promote the development and application of 5G, fully implemented port number portability, and further promoted the governance of APP infringing on users’ rights and interests. The supervision of information and communication services has achieved remarkable results. At the same time, however, there is still a gap between some service links and users’ high expectations, which needs to be improved in terms of user perception and experience. The "Notice" closely combines user complaints, focuses on hot and difficult issues that the masses have concentrated and the society has focused on, urges and guides enterprises to improve services and enhance user perception.

　　Q: What’s the difference between the Notice and the previous rectification actions?

　　A:In recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, based on its main responsibility, has organized and carried out a series of special actions to safeguard users’ rights and interests and rectify violations of laws and regulations in strengthening the special rectification of APP infringement on users’ rights and interests, regulating the order of the Internet market, and cracking down on spam messages and harassing calls. Compared with the special action organized in the previous period, this action should not only "keep the bottom line", but also "raise the line", focusing on positively promoting key enterprises in the industry to improve their service capabilities and service levels with higher standards, improving the key links that affect service perception with stricter requirements, fully protecting the users’ right to know and choose, and further enhancing the people’s sense of acquisition.

　　Q: What requirements does the Notice put forward for enterprises to enhance users’ service perception?

　　A:The Notice contains ten key tasks in three aspects, and puts forward the requirements of promoting the "five optimizations" of service measures, establishing a "double list" of personal information protection and realizing the "four upgrades" of service capabilities, referred to as "524 Action" for short.

　　Q: What are the specific aspects of the "five optimizations" of service initiatives?

　　A:The first is to optimize the display mode of tariff package settings. In response to users’ complaints that the tariff package of basic telecom enterprises is unreasonable and unclear, in the early stage, our department issued the Notice on Further Regulating the Marketing Behavior of Telecom Tariffs (Communication Letter [2018] No.276 of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) to standardize the marketing behavior of telecom tariffs, guide basic telecom enterprises to launch simple tariff package schemes, and do a good job of "list-style" publicity of tariffs. Considering the rapid development of the information and communication industry, the number of packages for different types of users, such as 4G and 5G, is increasing. In order to better let users understand and reasonably choose the appropriate tariff plan, the Notice requires relevant basic telecommunications companies to further comprehensively sort out the names of packages on sale, remind users of traffic usage in time, and reasonably set the unit price of traffic outside the package, so that users can "understand the package, choose it more clearly and use it with more confidence".

　　The second is to optimize the publicity mode of double gigabit services. Gigabit optical network and 5G are important components and bearing cornerstones of new infrastructure. In the early stage, our department issued the "Double Gigabit Network Collaborative Development Action Plan (2021-2023)" to vigorously promote the coordinated development of 5G networks and Gigabit optical networks. The Notice on Improving the Quality of 5G Service was issued, and the "four reminding mechanisms" were put forward, and the requirements of "four marketing red lines" were strictly observed to promote the improvement of 5G service level. At present, some basic telecommunications companies still fail to fully inform users when promoting and marketing 5G services. Some users report that they have handled Gigabit optical fiber, but the perception of network speed improvement is not obvious or the promotion effect of enterprises cannot be achieved. To this end, the Notice requires relevant basic telecommunications companies to strictly fulfill their service commitments, promote the development of 5G services in an orderly manner, and guide users to fully understand various factors affecting the speed of fixed broadband and make better use of fixed broadband services.

　　The third is to optimize the privacy policy and the display method of permission call. At present, most enterprises have informed users of the personal information processing rules in their privacy policies. However, in terms of form and content, there are many problems such as obscurity, verbosity and the use of a large number of technical terms, which makes it difficult for users to truly understand the purpose and purpose of personal information collection. To this end, in terms of privacy policy, the Notice clearly pointed out that enterprises should provide users with a summary of APP privacy policy in a concise, clear and easy-to-understand way, and the content presented should be concise and focused, which is convenient for users to read and understand. In terms of authority calling, in the special rectification action of APP infringing on users’ rights and interests carried out by our department in the early stage, it was found that problems such as compulsion, frequent and excessive demand for user authority were repeatedly prohibited. When calling authority, APP did not inform users in detail about the purpose of calling authority and the display of calling authority was unclear, which caused users’ doubts and misunderstandings. If the Notice requires that sensitive rights such as photo album, address book and location in the user’s terminal be called, the user should be informed of the purpose of calling the rights synchronously when the service scene actually happens in an appropriate way, such as through masking, floating window on the top bar, etc., so that the user can understand the purpose of the rights more clearly and fully protect the user’s right to know, so as to facilitate the user to make an active choice more clearly.

　　The fourth is to optimize the information display method of APP pop-up window. In the early stage, our department concentrated on rectifying the illegal behaviors such as "the advertising logo is almost invisible, the closing button is as small as an ant, the page camouflage is too big to cover the sky, and the click is induced to be dark", urging enterprises to pay attention to users’ demands and solving the problems of using words, pictures, videos and other means to deceive and mislead users to jump in the information page. At present, the overall improvement has achieved remarkable results.Major Internet companies (TOP100) basically solved the problem of "unable to turn off" the information on the screen, and the problem discovery rate of "disorderly jumping" misleading users dropped sharply to 1%.In order to further consolidate and deepen the results of the previous work and prevent similar problems from rebounding repeatedly, the Notice requires all Internet companies to set up obvious and effective close buttons in their APP opening information and pop-up information windows, so that users can "find and close" and may not use full-screen pictures, videos, etc. as jumping links to mislead users to click.

　　The fifth is to optimize the way of providing network disk services. In view of the problems reported by users, such as "the promotion of network disk services is not consistent with the actual services provided" and "the gap between the usage rate of free users and the experience of paying users is too large", in the early stage, our department issued management requirements such as standardizing telecom tariff marketing behavior, standardizing the service tariff and charging behavior of mobile information service industry. Considering the business form, service mode, user perception and other factors of network disk services, the Notice puts forward the requirements of optimizing product and service charges for related enterprises from two aspects: publicity and meeting the basic needs of users, providing reasonable upload and download rates to meet the basic needs of free users.

　　Q: How to establish a "double list" for personal information protection?

　　A:On November 1, 2021, the Personal Information Protection Law was officially implemented. According to relevant laws and regulations, our special action requires relevant enterprises (including 39 major Internet enterprises in the first batch in combination with enterprise scale and user volume) to establish a list of collected personal information and a list of personal information shared with third parties, and display them in the second-level menu of APP for users’ convenience.

　　The first is to establish a list of collected personal information. In view of the problem of illegal collection and over-range collection of personal information, which is strongly reflected by users and seriously infringes on users’ rights and interests, in the early stage, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on Further Promoting the Special Rectification Action of APP Infringement on Users’ Rights and Interests (No.164 [2020] of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), which put forward clear requirements for APP information collection. At present, some enterprises still have the problem of unclear information collection and use, and users are unclear about what personal information the APP has collected. In order to better protect users’ right to know, the Notice requires relevant enterprises to list the basic information of users’ personal information collected by APP (including embedded third-party software tool development kit SDK) concisely and clearly, including information types, purposes of use, usage scenarios, etc.

　　The second is to establish a list of personal information shared with third parties. The use of third-party SDK and other third-party services has become a common technical means in the development and operation of APP, which not only helps the rapid realization of APP function services, but also causes some problems that infringe on users’ rights and interests. Users often report that "browsing and buying products on an APP, while other apps will push related content", and users are unaware of where personal information is shared, which is easy to cause panic. In order to let users clearly understand the sharing of personal information among APP, SDK and other third parties, our department further requires enterprises to list the basic information of users’ personal information shared by APP and third parties in the secondary menu, including the types, purposes, scenarios and sharing methods of personal information shared with third parties.

　　Q: What capabilities are mainly improved by the "four improvements" in service capabilities?

　　A:The first is to improve the ability of cross-regional communication. In order to further implement the government work report, promote more services and realize cross-provincial communication. In the early stage, our department vigorously promoted the basic telecommunications enterprises to realize inter-provincial services such as payment in different places, cancellation of accounts in different places and replacement of cards in different places. This time, two businesses, namely "family network" and "fixed-mobile integration", which have a large base and high voice of users, were selected as the focus of promoting cross-regional general service in the next step. Among them, the "family network" business strives to achieve nationwide inter-provincial communication within the year; Because the "fixed-mobile convergence" business involves a large-scale and systematic transformation of the enterprise’s back-office system, the workload is heavy and it is difficult to achieve in the short term, our department will give priority to promoting the integration of mobile phone numbers and fixed broadband services across the province, and encourage qualified enterprises to achieve cross-provincial processing.

　　The second is to improve the ability of port number transfer service. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attached great importance to the service of port number portability, and clearly proposed to promote the implementation of port number portability in different places and online. In order to facilitate users to transfer numbers to the network, our department actively promotes three basic telecommunications enterprises to open 10,000 new business halls for carrying out services on the basis of their previous commitments to open channels. Considering the factors such as the number of business halls opened by the three basic telecommunications companies and the total size of users, the Notice requires all enterprises to add business halls that can handle port number transfer services to ensure reasonable layout and publicize them to the public in time, so that users can run less.

　　The third is to improve the responsiveness of the customer service hotline. At present, the problem that the customer service hotline of Internet enterprises can’t be found and connected has become a concentrated problem for users to reflect complaints. Internet enterprise services have involved hundreds of millions of users, and head enterprises have surpassed basic telecom enterprises in terms of user scale and business income, so it is urgent for head Internet enterprises to establish customer service hotline. In particular, most Internet companies often use online customer service and artificial intelligence at present, which is not very convenient for the elderly to use. In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Telecommunications Service Specification, the Notice requires enterprises engaged in Internet information services to establish a customer service hotline and publicize the telephone number of the customer service hotline in prominent positions such as websites and apps; Encourage qualified enterprises (including 39 major Internet companies in the first batch in combination with enterprise scale and user volume) to provide sufficient artificial customer service seats, and provide direct hotline service for the elderly. The customer service hotline strives to achieve the maximum monthly response time of 30 seconds, and the response rate of manual service exceeds 85%.

　　The fourth is to improve the personal information protection ability of APP’s key responsibility chain. Firmly grasping the key links of the APP responsibility chain is an important part of improving the ability to protect personal information. On the one hand, the APP store is the "goalkeeper" of APP distribution, and the misplacement of platform management will directly lead to the illegal app "exploiting the loopholes and playing the ball". Compared with post-event inspection and detection, the pre-event review of the APP by the APP store is more conducive to helping users keep illegal apps out. Therefore, the Notice requires that the APP store should provide testing services for this platform APP to prevent illegal apps from being put on the shelves. On the other hand, APP and SDK are the sources of personal information protection. In the previous special rectification work of APP, it was found that some APPs or SDKs started illegally or associated with each other, and collected and used users’ personal information without users’ knowledge. Relevant developers should fully consider the user’s right to choose, and the embedded SDK should not be started by itself or in association with other APPlications. At the same time, app developers and embedded SDK should provide corresponding functions, and users can choose whether to start the associated startup.

　　Q: What safeguards did the Notice put forward for carrying out special actions?

　　A:In order to effectively improve service quality, service level and governance effect, the Notice puts forward four safeguard measures. The first is to strengthen organizational implementation. All units are required to attach great importance to improving the quality of information and communication services, strengthen organizational leadership, improve management systems, clarify the division of tasks, consolidate the main responsibilities, and take effective measures to ensure that all work is effective. The second is to strengthen supervision and guidance. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will establish a tracking, interview, ranking and social publicity mechanism to exchange and promote typical cases and successful practices in a timely manner; Local communication administrations will urge local enterprises to complete their tasks on time and with good quality. The third is to promote collaborative governance. Promote the coordinated governance of government supervision, social supervision, enterprise self-discipline and user participation, and form a benign interaction between service quality improvement and perception improvement. The fourth is to establish a long-term mechanism. All relevant enterprises are required to establish and improve a long-term internal management mechanism, consolidate and deepen the effectiveness of all work, and strive to meet the needs of users. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will organize local communication administrations to carry out "looking back" in a timely manner to ensure that the information and communication service awareness promotion actions are implemented and effective.