Internet Users in China Expect to Be Tracked. Now, They Want Privacy.<br />While Chinese culture does not emphasize personal privacy and Chinese internet users have grown accustomed to surveillance and censorship, the anger is representative of a nascent,<br />but growing, demand for increased privacy and data protections online.<br />Ant Financial said in the terms of service that it reserved the right to share the data it collected with third parties — including government agencies assembling a national, government-sanctioned social credit system —<br />and could not be held responsible for what happened after it shared the information.<br />Fueled in part by widespread internet fraud and personal information theft, such a trend, if it continues, could become a major challenge to China’s internet titans,<br />and eventually to the cyber-authoritarian aspirations of the Chinese government itself.
