Line App Allowed Chinese Firm To Access Personal User Data

At a press conference today, the Japanese government said it was investigating the parent company behind the Line instant messaging app after a local newspaper reported that engineers at one of the app's Chinese contractors accessed the messages and personal details of Line users. From a report: According to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, four Chinese engineers accessed Line's infrastructure and viewed messages and personal information of Line users, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and Line IDs. The four engineers worked for a yet-to-be-named Shanghai-based software firm that the LINE Corporation had subcontracted to develop artificial intelligence-based services for the Line application. The four engineers are said to have accessed Line user data on 32 different occasions since August 2018. Most of Line's 86 million userbase is made up of Japanese users, and the Asian country has very strict data and privacy protection regulations.

Disappointed LINE user speaks

[shanen]

Anyone notice some PMD? Me neither. But not surprised there's so little interest in LINE on Slashdot.

I've been using LINE for some years.

(1) It's a sadly disappointing app. In particular, the user interface is bonkers. Not just the tiny-screen Android version, but also the Windows and Mac versions. (Disclaimers: Never tried the iPhone version, but maybe it's radically different there. Also, my Japanese is only intermediate (though the app does have English menus) and the company's international pretensions

Re:

[yedpodtrzitko]

I wonder what are you comparing the app to. All the mobile messaging apps looks the same nowadays (taking WhatsApp, Line, Signal, Zalo as a sample), so saying this particular one is bad is either hypocritical or all of them all bad and for some reason you decided it's just Line which is bad. As for the desktop app - Line is the best one I've ever used (WhatsApp is just a wrapped webview, so that cant really be considered a desktop app, Zalo is bloated and has sync issues... not sure what other desktop app

LINE

[AmiMoJo]

LINE is the most popular instant messaging app in Japan, and is looking to expand.

It seems likely that they set up an office in China to work on that market, which will involve complying with local laws on access to people's messages and censorship.

Re:

[enigma32]

Some people are always quick to apologize for companies "complying with local laws on access to people's messages and censorship" with little regard to whether those laws adhere to international standards for human rights. I think that's sad---or perhaps telling.

That said, based on the press release from Line, I think this is all probably not as big of a deal as the original article would lead us to believe:
https://linecorp.com/ja/pr/new... [linecorp.com]

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not apologising for anything.

What do the numbers mean?

[Errol backfiring]

If there were 32 connections with hardly any data, it could just be a connection test. I am very privacy-minded, but I also realize that at some point you will have to test your software to connect to the existing system. There is a big difference between 32 connection tests and 32 backups of the whole user database.

Or 32 teen idol accounts vs 32 politician accounts

[thesjaakspoiler]

The fact that they are hiding all the details about the incident suggests it might be more serious than we're told.