Chinese platforms such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in global popularity in recent years, offering a vast selection of products at stunningly low prices that have helped them take on US titan Amazon.
Temu outsources and stores users’ data with companies in several countries, including China, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, according to Seoul’s personal information protection commission (PIPC).
But the company “failed to disclose in its privacy policy or notify users that personal data would be entrusted to overseas entities,” it said in a statement.
The PIPC said it fined Temu around 1.39 billion won (US$997,624) for violating the data protection act.
The watchdog said Temu also failed to supervise overseas companies, including on data protection, and did not properly inspect their handling of personal information.
As of 2023, an average of 2.9 million users in South Korea were using Temu daily, but the company did not designate a local representative as required by South Korean data protection law, the watchdog said.
Temu also complicated the account deletion process with seven steps, making it “difficult for users to exercise their rights”, it added.
Temu respects the “decision by Korea’s personal information protection commission and cooperated fully with the investigation”, a company spokesman told AFP.
“We made improvements during the process to align with local requirements. We support efforts that promote consumer trust and strengthen data transparency,” they added.
Today’s announcement comes weeks after the watchdog said Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek was transferring personal data to a cloud services platform without users’ consent.
South Korea has previously blocked downloads of DeepSeek and moved to restrict its use on government-linked devices.
The South Korean watchdog also fined AliExpress around 1.98 billion won last year for illegally transferring Korean users’ data overseas.
And it fined social media giant Meta 21.6 billion won last year for illegally harvesting sensitive data including sexual orientation from nearly a million South Korean Facebook users and sharing it with advertisers.