Photo/Illutration The start-up screen for a Line app (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

All photos and videos posted to popular messaging app Line Corp.'s Talk service are stored in a computer in South Korea, Line officials acknowledged.

Employees at the subsidiary in South Korea have access to the computer.

The computer is also used to store transaction information related to the Line Pay smartphone cashless payment system. But the stored data does not include names and addresses of users.

The revelation comes on the heels of news that Chinese engineers at a Shanghai-based Line affiliate accessed personal information of Line users, such as name, phone number, email address and Line ID.

Line will transfer all the data stored in South Korea back to a computer in Japan in the near future, officials at the company said.

When asked by reporters on March 17 if the central government would revise its use of Line services, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said, “We will first confirm the facts.”

Takuya Hirai, the state minister in charge of digital reform, at the Lower House Cabinet Committee session that day, said, “There is a need for the Personal Information Protection Commission to thoroughly look into this matter and to ask for corrections if it determines inappropriate measures were taken.”

The computer in South Korea is owned by Naver Corp., the South Korean information technology company that effectively controls Line through its stake in the company.

Officials said the data storage arrangement has been in place since about 2012 when images were first allowed into the Talk service.

Line officials said they were in the process of revising the company’s privacy policy because current wording does not clearly spell out the possibility that data might be stored outside Japan.

The officials said they are looking into the number of South Korean employees at the Line subsidiary that are permitted to access the computer, what their work duties entailed, and if records exist about past accessing of the computer.

But officials said even the employees who are authorized to access the computer would not have been able to specific video and photo data because it was kept in a distributed storage system.

Jun Masuda, a Line director and chief strategic marketing officer, said the South Korean computer was used because “it is more advantageous in terms of setting up the computer system as well as cost.”

It is not unusual for companies to store massive volumes of data abroad.

Line’s privacy policy also states “We may subcontract certain services required for providing our Services (e.g.: building and operation of infrastructure, etc.) to a third party. In connection with this, we may entrust all or a part of the Personal Data to the subcontractor.”

 “That explanation may make it difficult for users to imagine that their photos and videos might go abroad,” admitted Noboru Nakatani, group chief trust and safety officer at Z Holdings Corp., Line’s parent company.

He added that the policy would be revised and that a plan has been put together to move that data back to Japan sometime after the middle of this year.

Z Holdings has already reported the concern over the South Korean subsidiary along with the access of the Japanese computer by employees at a Chinese subcontractor to the government’s Personal Information Protection Commission.

Line issued a statement on March 17 again apologizing for causing concerns to users, but reiterating that there had been no breach of the data by outsiders and that no information had leaked. 

(This article was written by Kenji Minemura, a senior staff writer, and Kenichiro Shino.)

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