Currently in Vietnam, an electronic trading floor is a platform that attracts a large number of users because of convenience and speed in the sales of goods. However, in fact, besides that convenience, customers are still worried or even have encountered risks of their personal information being disclosed or illegally used. The question is who will be responsible for disclosure or illegal use of customer’s personal information? To what extent are they responsible for protecting customers’ personal information?
Nowadays, an electronic trading floor is one of the most popular forms of e-commerce activities in Vietnam. In addition to attracting a lot of attention from end-users or customers, such as quality of goods, convenience of sales of goods, shipping time, payment methods… the trading floor also raises privacy concerns over customers’ personal information.
Confidential obligation of customers’ personal information
Currently, Vietnamese law stipulates that traders, organizations providing trading floor services, are responsible for “applying necessary measures to ensure the safety of the information relating to the users’ personal information”[1]. Accordingly, the personal information protected by the law is “information contributing to identifying a particular individual, including his/her name, age, home address, phone number, medical information, account number, information on personal payment transactions and other information that the individual wishes to keep confidential”[2]. In other words, Vietnamese law stipulates that the trading floors are obliged to keep their customers’ personal information confidential.
Limitations of confidential obligation of customers’ personal information
Currently, there are some trading floors imposing limits on confidential obligation of customers’ personal information on their homepage. Are these actions legal?
As mentioned above, according to the Vietnamese law, the trading floor is obliged to ensure safety of customers’ personal information by any means or measures. Each trading floor is required to have its own operation rules which are displayed on its website homepage, and the operation rules must clearly show privacy policy of customers’ personal information while using the trading floor services[3] as specified in Article 69 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce, including:
- purpose(s) of collection of personal information;
- scope of information use;
- duration of information storage;
- people or organizations that may access such information;
- address of information collection and management unit, including how consumers can ask about collection and processing of information relevant to them; and
- methods and tools for consumers to access and modify their personal data.
It can be seen that above contents in the privacy policy of customers’ personal information do not include the trading floor’s limited responsibility for customers’ personal information. However, in the case that customers’ personal information must be provided to assist state management agencies in investigating illegal acts[4] or with the consent of customer[5], the trading floors are allowed to disclose, provide such information.
Thus, Vietnamese law only limited responsibility for confidentiality of customers’ personal information of the e-commerce trading floor in these two cases. The trading floor that provide for addition circumstances that go beyond these two cases is likely to violate the law.
Legal consequence of continuing to stipulate additional limited responsibility for confidentiality
When there is a dispute relating to the security of the customer’s personal information, this limitation regulation of the e-commerce trading floor will not help it to release from the confidential obligation of customer’s personal information.
Conclusion
In short, the trading floor has the confidential obligation of customer’s personal information and this obligation is only exempted in the cases prescribed by law. Therefore, before choosing to use the services of any trading floor, users should carefully understand the privacy policy of customers’ personal information in particular as well as the operation rules of each floor in general. This finding not only helps users to understand the operation of trading floor, but also helps them to protect their interests in the best way when the dispute occurs.
[1] Clause 7 Article 36 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce.
[2] Clause 13 Article 3 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce.
[3] Point i Clause 2 Article 38 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce.
[4] Clause 9 Article 36 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce.
[5] Clause 3 Article 70 Decree 52/2013/ND-CP on E-commerce.