A customer uses a facial recognition payment equipment dubbed "Dragonfly" at a bakery shop in Beijing, capital of China, Dec 27, 2018.File photo:Xinhua

China's telecom terminal industry association has issued a guideline on apps' collection and use of personal information like facial information. The collection must be based on clear and reasonable purposes, and should be within the minimum and necessary scope of achieving the purposes.

The Telecommunication Terminal Industry Forum Association announced the general principle on Thursday, taking effect on the same day.

With the explosive growth of the types and number of mobile applications, app infringements on users' rights have kept emerging, leading to an urgent need for protection of private information, the guideline said.

The evaluation of minimum and necessary principles for apps in collecting and using personal information aims to standardize the collection and use of facial information, mobile phone number lists, messages, locations, pictures and other personal sensitive information.

The collection and usage of facial information was one of the hottest topics. More and more mobile applications are using face recognition for account login, mobile payment and other functions. Facial information is now an important part of users' personal information.

In terms of collection, the guideline said that facial recognition should not be required, except as required by laws and regulations.

The institutions that drafted the guideline included leading Chinese tech firms Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, Alibaba and ByteDance.

Global Times