Research on the Civil Law Protection of Private Information

According to the China Annual Report on Personal Information Security, data breaches nationwide will increase by 23% year-on-year in 2024, and private information such as biometrics, health care, and financial transactions will become the main targets. In this context, Article 1034 of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China clarifies the legal attributes of private information, stipulates that the relevant provisions on privacy are applied to its protection, and the Personal Information Protection Law applies when there are no special provisions, which makes private information both “private” and “identifiable” as the intersection of privacy and personal information. Theoretically, there is a dispute over the boundary between private information and sensitive personal information, and the protection model also faces differences in the choice of unification and dualization. In this regard, we can learn from the German “field theory” and combine the principle of proportionality in our country’s Civil Code, refine the rules from the whole chain of collection, use and storage, set up special regulatory agencies, and empower public participation through education, technical tools, public interest litigation, etc., so as to improve the private information protection system and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of citizens.