Adding to the widely held perception that Hong Kong still leaves much to be desired in protecting personal privacy, the latest study by the office of the privacy commissioner shows the city has performed poorly, in general, based on global standards, when it comes to protecting the privacy of children.

The study, conducted in May as part of a global privacy enforcement assessment exercise, specifically assessed the protection of children's privacy, focusing on the online collection of children's personal data. For this purpose, the office of the privacy commissioner conducted an assessment of 45 local websites and mobile apps targeting children to see how good they were when it came to privacy protection. The results were not satisfactory.

Particularly worthy of mention is that up to 60 percent of the websites asked for children's home addresses while 73 percent of the websites collected their phone numbers. These two figures are strikingly higher than the global figures of 19 percent and 22 percent, respectively. This kind of information has everything to do with the privacy and safety of children, and should not have been collected by the websites - no matter what type of business they engage in.

There is simply no legal way for the operators of these websites to conduct whatever type of transaction with the children directly without the presence and consent of their parents. It is common knowledge that children are not legally considered competent to give consent before they reach the age of 18.

What is more outrageous is that up to 49 percent of the websites surveyed were found to have the intention of sharing the collected personal data with third parties - supposedly for commercial benefits. This could expose the children to the risk of being preyed on by pedophiles or dishonest and immoral people.

Some of those shortcomings, or inadequacies, could have been rectified easily without the need for website operators to put in much effort or incur much expense, as suggested by the privacy commissioner. Unfortunately, they seem to have conveniently overlooked the need to protect the privacy and safety of children in their efforts to maximize organizational benefits or commercial profits.

With the privacy ordinance having been introduced and implemented for nearly a decade, privacy protection is still yet to be accomplished in the city. It is high time Hong Kong people did some soul-searching to find out what has gone wrong. Perhaps it is a good idea to suggest that people start re-examining the culture of seeking quick success and instant benefits.

(HK Edition 12/02/2015 page10)