New regulation to protect consumers' privacy

China's top industry and commerce authority will formulate a regulation to protect the personal information of consumers, in an effort to implement the newly amended consumer rights law, a senior official said on Thursday.

Zhang Mao, head of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said at a teleconference that the authority will revise a set of regulations to ensure they are in accordance with the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests.

The revised consumer rights law was passed by the top legislature on Oct 25.

Zhang also said the authority will come up with a new regulation on the protection of consumers' personal information, which was included in the revision to the consumer rights law.

The revised law, which will take effect on March 15, stated that business owners should take strict measures to protect the personal information of buyers and remedial action must be made immediately if such cases happen.

Further, advertisers should not send commercial information to consumers without their approval.

Zhang said the revision to the law has made more work for the industry and commerce authorities as the law stated that the authority should respond to consumer complaints within seven days.

It also enabled industry and commerce authorities to give heavier punishments to business owners that violate consumer rights.

Zhang called on authorities at different levels to further improve the efficiency of the consumer complaint hotline "12315" and ensure that consumer complaints are handled in a timely manner.

The updated consumer rights law, which was revised for the first time since it was enacted in 1994, gave online consumers a seven-day cooling-off period to return goods for refund.

It also outlined heavier penalties to business owners in the event a product resulted in the death of a consumer.