Today (17th), Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that in the process of entrusting China to develop system services for the social software “LINE”, it was reported that Chinese technical personnel had accessed Japan’s personal user information. In this regard, LINE Taiwan has also officially announced to once again clarify the privacy of LINE Taiwan user information.
LINE Taiwan explains the privacy status of user data. Taiwanese users have no unauthorized access or browsing.
LINE Taiwan first put forward four main explanations for the data leakage. It mentioned that the data of Taiwanese users are strictly protected. First, LINE’s global (including Taiwan) user data is only stored in South Korea and Japan, not in China. LINE’s Japanese servers and systems that store information comply with ISO 27001 information security management system, SOC2 & SOC3 (SysTrust) and other information security management systems and are continuously maintained to protect users’ personal information and privacy. Korean servers also have strict access control protection mechanisms, and only a few authorized and managed internal users can access important information.
Secondly, including Taiwanese user conversations, LINE has adopted end-to-end encryption (E2EE) technology since 2015. All one-to-one text and location messages are directly encrypted on the phone. Only the two parties in the conversation can encrypt and decrypt each other’s messages, and neither LINE internal personnel nor external third parties can intercept or read them.
Third, LINE has a strict permission control mechanism for all internal LINE employees to use the system and obtainable data. The current login record does not show any unauthorized access or browsing of Taiwanese user information.
Fourth, LINE has never provided any user information from Taiwan or other countries to the Chinese government.
In addition, LINE Taiwan also provides LINE The information on the Privacy Center website shows that LIINE continues to provide more complete information security and user privacy protection information. In the existing “Personal Data Security Control” description, it is mentioned that it has provided message encryption functions and 24/7 security monitoring. Security measures are implemented through testing and strict access control based on “need to know”. In the announcement, it was mentioned that in the future, it will also correspond to the new version of Japan’s personal information law that will be launched next year (2022), and comply with the new law’s specifications for cross-border data transmission.
Nowadays, everyone relies heavily on communities or social software for interaction, and data privacy has always been what everyone is most concerned about. In Taiwan, because the use of LINE is more popular, there is no question of whether data can be obtained or browsed without authorization like in Japan, according to the official statement. Since we usually cannot access this kind of internal mechanism, when we still need to use this kind of software, we can only try our best to protect personal data or disclose it to a limited extent.
LINE Taiwan “LINE User Information Related Instructions” Announcement
Source: KOCPC Chinese