Personal Information Commission Recommends Revision of Terms of Use for Three Major Telecom Operators and MVNO Providers
[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] The Personal Information Protection Commission announced on the 24th that it has recommended all mobile telecommunications operators, including the three major mobile carriers and MVNO operators, to revise their terms of service to limit the period for users to view their own call records to six months.
According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, the three major mobile carriers have been retaining call records and base station connection information, which are communication fact confirmation data, for 12 months under the "Protection of Communications Secrets Act" for purposes such as investigation and security. However, their terms of service state that only call records from the past six months are retained and can be viewed for purposes such as billing and complaint resolution. MVNO operators also operate similar terms of service to those of the three major carriers.
The Personal Information Protection Act stipulates that anyone can request access (Article 35, Paragraph 1) to their personal information processed by a personal information handler, and that access requests cannot be restricted without justifiable reasons. The Personal Information Protection Commission viewed the mobile telecommunications operators’ terms of service as conflicting with the right to access personal information under the Personal Information Protection Act.
Following this improvement recommendation, mobile telecommunications operators must submit an improvement plan, including the revision of terms of service and the timing of service implementation, to the Personal Information Protection Commission within 30 days. The Commission explained, "Even without revising the terms of service, data subjects can access 12 months of call records based on the Personal Information Protection Act, but if the terms are not revised, users may misunderstand the accessible period as six months and thus may not fully exercise their right to access, which is why this recommendation was made."
This improvement recommendation originated from a decision case by the Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee under the Personal Information Protection Commission in May. In that case, a subscriber of Carrier A requested access to call records older than six months but was denied, leading to a dispute mediation application. The Dispute Mediation Committee decided that the carrier must comply with access requests for call records retained for 12 months regardless of the retention purpose.
Yoon Jong-in, Chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission, explained, "This improvement recommendation is aimed at guaranteeing the public’s right to access personal information under the Personal Information Protection Act for mobile telecommunications operators."
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