In December 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile committed a water retrograde. A few days ago, a dispute over "yin-yang contract fraud" had already pushed Xiaopeng Automobile to the cusp of public opinion. In this regard, the official response of Xiaopeng Automobile is: management errors, follow-up will perform the contract.
However, wave after wave, Xiaopeng Automobile's "management mistakes" have once again caused heated discussion on the Internet in another form in just a few days. It is reported that Xiaopeng was recently fined 100,000 yuan for illegally collecting customer face data.
According to the penalty letter of the Shanghai Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Service Co., Ltd. purchased 22 camera equipment with face recognition functions, with a total hardware and software procurement fee of 173,800 yuan, and installed them all in its stores, involving 5 directly operated stores and 2 franchise stores.
Material source: Tianyancha
During the period from January 2021 to June 2021, the above-mentioned face recognition camera devices collected a total of 431623 faces. Without the consent of the consumer, nor did it explicitly or inform the consumer of the purpose of collection and use, the act violated the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law, and was fined 100,000 yuan by the Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and ordered to make corrections.
In response to the problem of violations, Xiaopeng Automobile expressed full obedience to this administrative punishment and made a deep reflection on it. Xiaopeng Automobile said that the data has been completely deleted, there is no leakage or illegal use of personal information, and only non-personally associated digital data such as the number of passenger visits is used as a reference for business conditions.
Collecting customer data is not the first of Xiaopeng
For the installation of cameras in Xiaopeng Automobile stores, many people may feel that it is not a big deal, because many shopping malls and stores are now equipped with surveillance cameras, and even our company has installed several cameras. However, this camera is not the other camera.
Xiaopeng Auto's face recognition camera can recognize your face at the moment you arrive at the store and archive it, so that the face collection without consumer permission has violated the interests of consumers and is illegal. If Xiaopeng Automobile is only to collect non-personal correlation data, then does it need to spend 173,800 yuan to purchase and install a face recognition camera? What exactly is the face recognition camera used for?
In fact, car dealers have always collected customer information, but Xiaopeng Automobile just happened to be caught because of the installation of face recognition cameras. Judging from Xiao Lei's previous work experience in car sales in 4S stores, collecting user data is only the daily work of car sales consultants.
In the automobile sales industry, sales consultants will collect user data in the form of "three tables and two cards", and these data analyze the customer's car purchase intentions and preferences. Some data show that the turnover rate of building a card is about 30% higher than that of no card, so the "three tables and two cards" has important significance for every sales consultant and even every car dealer's sales strategy.
Simply put, from the moment you enter the 4S store and leave your contact information, it has been recorded. This customer file will not be declared initially terminated until the return visit of the car, and then the after-sales department will continue to collect the data. In Xiao Lei's view, the original intention of Xiaopeng Automobile to install face recognition cameras in stores is to make the "three tables and two cards" customer management more efficient.
For example, when the customer arrives at the store for the first time, the face recognition camera will store the customer's face data, and when the customer arrives at the store for the second time, the system will obtain the customer data from the database for the first time, and notify the sales consultant who is connected with it to provide services to the customer.
On the bright side, this facial recognition system can indeed greatly improve the productivity of sales consultants and the waiting time of customers. Of course, the biggest problem with the system is that it does not have customer permission when collecting customer data. In Xiao Lei's view, if Xiaopeng Automobile can obtain the customer's permission in advance when using this system, and delete the customer data before the customer becomes resistant, then it may be able to escape the disaster.
In addition, from the perspective of data leakage, "three tables and two cards" as a core secret can be described as the survival of the automobile sales department. Therefore, this kind of highly confidential data has little possibility of being leaked.
Judging from the punishment of Xiaopeng Automobile, it collected 430,000 user face photos, but only fined 100,000 yuan. Such a punishment can only be regarded as a "light punishment" even in Xiaopeng Automobile's own view. Xiao Lei believes that the reason why the Shanghai Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau only imposed a lighter punishment on it is also because there is a certain rationality in Xiaopeng Automobile's approach.
Privacy concerns are on the cusp
Xiaopeng Motors is not the first company to use face recognition cameras to illegally collect consumer data. As early as this year's CCTV 3.15 consumer rights protection evening meeting, BMW 4S stores have caused widespread controversy over the illegal collection of face data, so that the term "privacy protection" has rushed to the hot search.
According to CCTV, hundreds of 4S stores owned by BMW dealer Zhengtong Automobile at that time were equipped with cameras that could obtain customer face information. In the face of CCTV exposure, BMW Quickly responded and said that it had not used face recognition devices to obtain customer information at the dealer end. In addition, in response to the collection of customer information by its dealers, BMW Auto also said, "It has urged Zhengtong Automobile to stop using face recognition equipment and rectification, and to conduct inspections for all BMW brand dealers to implement relevant requirements, as well as apologize for the misconduct of individual dealers." “
It is worth mentioning that the protagonist Zhengtong Automobile, as the center of the event, also quickly lost in the face of CCTV exposure, and quickly responded, saying that it had stopped the use of all equipment for the first time and carried out self-inspection to verify the situation. Zhengtong Automobile also apologized for the troubles caused by the public and customers caused by the incident. The incident of Xiaopeng Automobile being exposed to collect customer privacy is actually the same as the previous operation of Zhengtong Automobile, but with the increasingly strict supervision, for similar incidents, the relevant agencies have become more stringent in handling.
In addition, with the rise of smart cars, the topic of suspected privacy violations has become common on smart cars with cameras all over the car. As early as March this year, the well-known American magazine "Consumer Report" said that Tesla's use of cameras to shoot and upload passenger images has caused people to worry about privacy and safety. In this regard, Tesla CEO Musk acknowledged that Tesla has the phenomenon of monitoring car owners, and said that monitoring car owners is only to ensure the safety of users when using FSD beta.
In fact, in addition to Tesla, many smart cars under the umbrella of Xiaopeng, Weilai, BYD, Changan, Ford, General Motors and many other car companies need to monitor the user's mental state in real time through the in-car camera. It can be seen that with the emergence of smart cars, visual sensors such as cameras have become indispensable hardware configurations for smart cars.
Current autonomous driving technology is not mature, and many car users are overly dependent on L2-level automatic driver assistance systems. If the car cannot monitor the user in real time, there is a great risk when the vehicle needs to be taken over by the user. Therefore, for safety reasons, it is also necessary for car companies to equip the car with a camera for monitoring the user's mental state.
However, no matter what the original intention of car companies to equip them with cameras in the car, it is ultimately a technological advantage at the expense of user privacy. You know, as a necessary hardware on smart cars, the camera is like a double-edged sword, which can not only protect the safety of users' lives at critical moments, but also make users' privacy have nowhere to hide.
Obviously, car companies equip cars with in-car cameras for the sake of the user's car safety and convenience, not to steal the user's private data, because stealing user data is harmful to the car company.
How to use the double-edged sword of the camera?
In the matter of cameras, the original intention of car companies is good, and most users are not concerned about having more cameras on the car, but are afraid that their privacy problems in the process of using the car will be stolen by this camera. Therefore, the crux of this matter is not the camera itself, but the attitude expressed by car companies to this camera. Based on this, Xiao Lei believes that the way to solve this matter is actually very simple.
First, in terms of policy, China's relevant departments should formulate some privacy protection clauses on the collection of intelligent car data to ensure that the collected data will not be taken another way. Only when the state formulates mandatory standards will it form a strong and effective execution force among car companies.
In August this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security successively issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Access to Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products and the Several Provisions on the Safety Management of Automobile Data Security (Trial), of which the Several Provisions on the Safety Management of Automobile Data (Trial) clearly stipulate that "without the separate consent of the person being collected, connected vehicles shall not transmit data containing personal information to the outside of the vehicle through the network and physical interface, but the clarity will be converted to less than 1.2 million pixels and the face that can identify the individual has been erased." Except for video and image data for license plate information. At the same time, connected vehicles shall not transmit audio, video, images and other data collected in the cockpit of the car and the data obtained through their processing to the outside of the car through the network and physical interfaces. Shortly after the regulation was issued, Tesla began to build its own data center in China. It can be seen that in the past two years, China has gradually increased its control efforts in the privacy protection of smart cars, and in the future, China's smart cars will be more standardized in terms of privacy protection.
Second, when a new car is delivered, the sales and delivery personnel of the car company have the obligation to clearly inform the user of the use of the camera on the smart car, rather than marking it in an inconspicuous corner of the Vehicle Manual. You know, there are very few car users who can read the instruction manual today.
Third, the user must have the ultimate control of the camera. In this regard, in fact, many car companies have done this, they install a cover plate in front of the camera in the car to block the camera, when the user does not need to use the camera to close the cover to protect their privacy. Such an approach actually does not cost too much to the car company, but it can reflect the car company's intention to protect the user's privacy.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet