China’s Big Data Crackdown: Legal Risks Every Developer Should Know

Big Data Industry Shock

Since the beginning of this year, the internet finance sector in China has undergone a major overhaul, with third‑party data providers for cash‑loan risk control becoming a focus of supervision in the third quarter.

Notable incidents include the disbanding of Tongdun Technology’s crawler department, the arrest of employees from Qiaoda Technology, and the large‑scale police operation against MoXie Technology, resulting in over 120 arrests and the seizure of servers and equipment.

Regulatory Crackdown

On October 21, the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Justice jointly issued guidelines limiting the annual interest rate of loans to 36% and the People’s Bank of China released a trial measure for personal financial information protection, tightening rules on data collection and use.

As a result, many financial‑data companies have halted crawler services, and the industry faces a stagnation period.

Legal Risks of Data Crawling

Data protected by copyright, personal privacy information, and data covered by the Anti‑Unfair Competition Law are illegal to scrape for profit without permission.

Violations include ignoring website robots.txt, bypassing technical safeguards, and using scraped data for commercial gain, defamation, or fraud, which can constitute criminal offenses.

How to Protect Personal Information

Practical tips include avoiding public Wi‑Fi, using HTTPS sites, employing unique passwords, securely disposing of documents containing personal data, safeguarding identity documents, installing security software, and being cautious about sharing location or personal photos online.

Conclusion

Developers and companies must understand the new regulations, respect legal boundaries, ensure the legality of their business models, and cooperate with authorities to avoid severe penalties.