Cafes under fire over collecting customers' personal details

Six cafes have been exposed to have collected unnecessary and excess personal information from consumers when they made orders via apps or mini WeChat programs.

Shanghai's cybersecurity authorities and market regulators have been conducting intensive crackdowns against violations involving unnecessary personal information collection.

Pacific Coffee, Luckin Coffee, Costa Coffee, M Stand, Nowwa Coffee and One Step Garden were found to have failed to rectify irregularities based on China's personal information protection law, officials said.

The irregularities ranged from lack of a privacy policy, compulsion or frequently inducing the collection of precise location information to failure to provides consumers the option to turn off targeted pop-up notifications, according to authorities.

The six cafes have been ordered to abide by regulations and rectify problems.