VKontakte will not merge user data with credit offices (Topic)

The popular social resource VKontakte did not agree to transfer information about account holders to the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBCH).

Cooperation will not take place. The NBCH intended to collect information about the owners of the pages to determine their solvency. Perhaps a good reason for this was the scandal about the leak of personal data with another social network - Facebook.

Another way to analyze borrowers

The Bureau of Credit Histories has been developing a special service for analyzing data on the solvency of borrowers through their pages on the social network. At the same time, technological work was carried out with the help of the Mail.Ru Group corporation, which is also the owner of VKontakte. From the side of Mail.Ru, the information about the joint work of the NBCH and the social network was confirmed with the clarification that requests will be conducted only on open information of an actual nature, and not on remote or hidden data.

The VKontakte administration confirmed the fact of possible cooperation. However, representatives of the social network clarify that the negotiations did not lead to the necessary form of interaction, in which the VK principles regarding the preservation of the privacy of user data would not be violated. As a result, the social network refused to cooperate. Also, VKontakte does not plan to encourage the search and collection of information that is even in the public domain.

Personal information at risk

The upcoming litigation could also cause VK to refuse to interact with the NBCH. In this case, the social network acts as a plaintiff, and the defendant is Double LLC.

The company collected the available information on the most popular resources, from where all information about their visitors comes. Acting in the interests of its customers, Double Data transferred personal data to them: real names and surnames, real places of study and work. It is clear that neither the users themselves nor the social resource gave permission for the commercial use of this information.

Initially, the number of defendants in the case included the NBKI, which uses this service to determine the solvency, but later VKontakte concluded a peace agreement with them. By the decision of the arbitration court "Double" was restricted from the right to collect information about users for commercial purposes or transfer to third parties.

On other people's mistakes

Not so long ago, a scandal broke out due to a data leak in another social network - Facebook. In doing so, a similar technology was used. The analytical service Cambridge Analytica managed to get hold of the personal data of about 50 million users and could use it for political purposes.

As told by the foreign press, this could affect the preferences of citizens during the political campaign for the election of the American president. Later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that almost 90 million visitors to the social network "shared" their personal data.

After the exposing publications in the press, the official structures of the United States and Great Britain entered the case. Zuckerberg had to explain himself to the authorities in the American Congress. Amid the scandalous hype around Facebook, the company's shares fell, and during the proceedings, the social network had to temporarily stop about 200 applications that required access to user information. The social network later revised its privacy policy, and the Cambridge Analytica service was discontinued in early May 2018.

The Topic of Article: VKontakte will not merge user data with credit offices.
Author: Jake Pinkman