Kakao, Line under scrutiny over access to personal data

Yonhap

By Lee Suh-yoon, Jung Min-ho

Korea's telecommunications regulator has been investigating two of the country's most popular messenger apps over their access to personal data.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Friday that it has been looking into KakaoTalk and Line to check if they had collected call and text logs from Android users without permission.

The app operators are suspected of having access to the users' call and text history via a system in which the users have to “agree” to share such data without knowing exactly to what they are agreeing.

Both operators have denied violating any privacy rules.

“Even if we technically have access to the call logs of some users, we haven't collected the information,” a KakaoTalk spokesperson told The Korea Times.

The KCC has investigated Facebook Korea over similar suspicions.

Access to private information such as call and text logs requires users' separate and explicit permission.

But Android's old operating system versions (before 6.0) gave app operators access to users' call and text history without users' acknowledgment. Once users agree to “share contacts” in order to start up their app, such information immediately becomes available to the operators.

In October 2015, the system started to seek users' permission in a specific and clear manner, asking whether they agreed to “share call and text logs.”

About 42 percent of all Android users are using versions below Android 6.0, according to the most recent data on Google's developer portal.