Three state-backed financial groups in China have issued a joint statement warning against the use of cryptocurrencies as payment, citing their volatility as a high risk. They further remind industry players that digital currencies cannot be used in any financial activities in the country. National Internet Finance Association of China, China Banking Association, and Payment and Clearing Association of China said Tuesday that its members should not be involved in transactions dealing with cryptocurrencies. These included activities encompassing intermediary services that facilitate trading as well as the exchange of fiat money.The three groups collectively represent local online companies that provide financial services, local banks, and payment companies. 

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Their joint warning came in a week that had seen Bitcoin’s value dip significantly following Tesla’s Elon Musk announcement his company had halted use of the cryptocurrency over concerns about its impact on the environment. Without singling out Bitcoin, the three industry groups said cryptocurrencies were not recognised by China’s central bank and had been flagged for their financial risks as well as potential ties to money laundering. They noted that virtual currencies had no real value and prices were easily manipulated. They should not be circulated as money and contracts involving their use were not protected by law, they said, adding that any party that participated in such investments or transactions would have to bear the consequences and losses. They reminded consumers to be aware of the risks and refrain from taking part in activities involving cryptocurrencies. China over the years had warned repeatedly about initial coin offerings or digital currencies, describing these as illegal and driven by market speculation that could disrupt “economic and financial order”. Crypto exchanges also were outlawed, though, individuals still were permitted to own cryptocurrencies. 

The government also had not clamp down on crypto mining, which was not referenced in the financial groups’ joint statement. Researchers last month cautioned that, unless more stringent regulations were implemented, China’s crypto mining could undermine the world’s sustainability efforts. The report estimated that the country accounted for more than 75% of Bitcoin’s hashing power or calculations, fuelled by China’s proximity to manufacturers of the required hardware and access to cheap power. And while it had outlawed financial activities involving cryptocurrencies, the Chinese government had created its own alternative that is commonly described as the digital version of the yuan or renminbi (RMB). Called Digital Currency Electronic Payments (DCEP), the digital yuan was developed on blockchain and cryptographic technologies and might later support near-field communication (NFC) capabilities, to allow offline money transfers between two digital wallets that were within proximity. DCEP could be downloaded on mobile devices using approved apps, which included AliPay, WeChat, and Apple Pay, and its use in trials kicked off last year amidst the global pandemic. Some residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou were given DCEP packets worth of yuan for use. The Chinese government was studying such trials and assessing the addition of new test cities.RELATED COVERAGE More

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The Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk has handed down a determination that Flight Centre breached the privacy of 6,918 customers when it held its “design jam” event across the weekend of March 24 to March 26 in 2017.
On the first day of the event, Flight Centre handed a data set containing production data from the 2015 and 2016 calendar years to the 16 teams competing in the event, which consisted of 90 people in total.
The data set had 106 million rows of data, with the company believing it had obfuscated personal information of its customers, leaving only the customer’s year of birth, postcode, gender, and booking information. In the determination made by Falk, Flight Centre had its business intelligence and Australian infosec teams, as well as event coordinators review the first 1,000 rows of data to confirm there was no sensitive information in the file.
However, 36 hours after the event had begun, a free text field under a column called “ProductName” was found by one of the participants to contain credit card information.
Flight Centre then reviewed the file and found it contained 4,011 credit cards and 5,092 passport numbers affecting 6,918 people, as well as 475 usernames and passwords to mostly vendor portals. 757 dates of birth were also identified.
Upon learning of the breach, the company prevented access to the file and truncated the column to 10 characters, received verbal confirmation from participants that they had destroyed all copies of the file, and began a post-incident review. Those who had their payment or passport details breached were notified by the company, offered free identity theft and credit monitoring coverage for a year, and Flight Centre coughed up for the cost of replacing passports when customers opted for it.
Falk said that Flight Centre determined it was a low-risk incident because it involved no intrusion, the incident was not malicious, a known number of third parties had access to data, and there was no evidence of misuse.

The heart of the breach was Flight Centre having no technical controls to prevent travel consultants from entering passport information and credit card details into a free text field other than complying to company policy, Falk wrote.
“The absence of technical controls to prevent or detect such incorrect storage caused an inherent data security risk in terms of how this kind of personal information was protected by the respondent immediately prior to the data breach,” Falk said.
At the time of the incident, Flight Centre had the ability to detect inappropriate storage of credit card information in some of its systems, but not its quoting, invoicing, or receipting systems. The company now scans on a weekly basis for the storage of payment and passport information in free text fields.
Falk also criticised the company for handing over such a large data set in the first event it had run, and not requiring participants to sign an agreement.
“This determination is a strong reminder for organisations to build privacy by design into new projects involving personal information handling, particularly where large datasets will be shared with third-party suppliers for analysis,” Falk said on Monday.
“Organisations should assume that human errors — such as the inadvertent disclosure of personal information to suppliers — could occur and take steps to prevent them.
“They should also carry out privacy impact assessments for data projects to assist in identifying and addressing all relevant privacy impacts.”
Due to the company reacting swiftly, notifying individuals before the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme came into force, offering those impacts a number of services, paying for monitoring of the dark web to see if the details were misused, and candour when dealing with her office, Falk said it was not appropriate to take further action other than declaring Flight Centre does not repeat its actions.
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