Shanghai Milk Tea Shop Fined 50,000 Yuan for Collecting Customer Personal Information

Shanghai Milk Tea Shop Fined 50,000 Yuan for Collecting Customer Personal Information

A decade ago, it was unimaginable that we could shop anytime, anywhere with nothing but a phone, never mind whether we remembered our wallets. As technology has advanced, online payment has become ever more seamless: you can order and pay on the small screen in your hand without even setting foot in the store. But have you noticed how many of these mini-program ordering services and scan-to-order setups require you to grant certain permissions before you can proceed?

According to reports from China Beverage Express, this October the Putuo District Market Supervision Administration in Shanghai investigated and penalized a catering company for violating consumer personal-information protection rules. The Shanghai-based company had placed QR codes on its tables so that customers could scan to order and pay.

To complete those actions, however, customers had to authorize the release of their phone numbers—and the consent was mandatory. At no point were they told what their phone numbers would be used for.

Worse still, investigators found the restaurant was actively collecting customer data. Member IDs, names, gender, phone numbers, stored card balances, and more could be viewed, downloaded, and used from the system's back end. All of it was fully visible to system operators, yet no confidentiality obligations had been imposed on any of them.

The Legal Consequences

In response, the Putuo District Market Supervision Administration determined that the company had violated Article 29 of the Consumer Rights Protection Law, and issued a warning along with a fine of 50,000 yuan.

Consumer Rights Protection Law, Article 29:

Business operators collecting and using consumers' personal information shall follow the principles of legality, fairness, and necessity. They shall clearly disclose the purpose, method, and scope of the collection and use, and obtain the consumer's consent.

Business operators shall adopt technical and other necessary measures to ensure information security and prevent the leakage or loss of consumers' personal information. Where leakage or loss occurs—or may occur—they shall immediately take remedial action.

Data Collection as Standard Practice

These days, every visit to a bubble tea shop or convenience store comes with a push to scan a QR code, follow an official account, log into a mini program, and register as a member—sometimes even surrendering unnecessary details such as your name, phone number, home address, or ID number. Have these businesses simply become the street-corner survey takers of ten years ago, only with better software?

Privacy and the New Regulations

Must technological progress always come at the greatest possible cost to privacy? Even buying a cup of bubble tea now demands your phone number and name—is the plan to sell that customer list when the shop winds down, so that training schools can pester you with enrollment calls?

In response to exactly this kind of behavior, the Personal Information Protection Law took effect this November, with penalty ceilings far exceeding those under the Consumer Rights Protection Law. With luck, stiffer fines will make some bubble tea shops think twice before collecting and handling customers' personal information so carelessly. After all, nobody enjoys the promo calls and text messages that follow.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If all this talk of milk tea has you craving something better in your cup, here are FrontStreet Coffee's entry-level specialty picks by origin:

Ethiopia: FrontStreet Natural Huakui (Sidamo) and FrontStreet Washed Guodingding Cooperative (Yirgacheffe). Yirgacheffe lots lean washed, with jasmine florals, lemon acidity, and berry notes; Sidamo is famous for naturals with prominent tropical fruit and fermentation aromatics—the Huakui shows berries, florals, jackfruit, melon, and honey.

Brazil: FrontStreet Cerrado Red Bourbon and FrontStreet Fazenda Rainha (Queen Estate). Sun-grown Brazilian coffee matures quickly, giving a soft bean, gentle acidity, and lovely sweetness. The Cerrado daily-drinker lot delivers classic cream, peanut, and cocoa notes; the higher-grown, rare Yellow Bourbon Queen Estate adds sugarcane sweetness to its compound nut aromas and a silky, velvety body—with or without milk.

Indonesia: FrontStreet Lintong Mandheling and FrontStreet PWN Golden Mandheling. Mandheling's distinctive character comes from wet-hulling, a process born of Sumatra's rainy climate and limited resources, in which parchment is stripped from the semi-dried beans by machine to speed drying. The result is a cup richer and smoother than most, with herbal and spice notes—ideal for those who dislike acidity. The PWN Golden Mandheling goes through three rounds of hand sorting plus one machine pass, yielding an even cleaner, smoother cup with clearer woody and caramel tones.

Costa Rica: FrontStreet Mozart and FrontStreet Blackberry. High elevations, big day-night temperature swings, and fertile volcanic soil make Costa Rica a producer of strict-hard-bean (SHB) coffee, and honey processing is its signature—fruit mucilage dried around the bean for pronounced sweetness and a clear finish. Choose Blackberry (black-honey process) or Mozart (raisin-honey process) for raisin and blueberry sweetness with osmanthus and rose aromatics, delicious as pour-over, cold brew, americano, or latte.

Yunnan, China: FrontStreet Yunnan Catimor (washed, from Baoshan—classic nut and chocolate notes, soft and balanced) and FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan Typica, an ancient arabica variety grown at 1,300 meters. Medium roasted, the Typica is cleaner in the cup, with hazelnut, dried apricot, black tea, caramel, and ripe plum.

Panama: FrontStreet Boquete Washed Geisha. Panama is synonymous with Geisha, and Esmeralda Estate is the most famous name of all—but for beginners, a full Esmeralda lot is a splurge. The entry-level Boquete Geisha comes from Panama's most representative specialty region, is washed, and shows the variety's classic orange-blossom and honeyed character with outstanding value.