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

Under government scrutiny for the handling of users' personal information, Line Corp. has acknowledged that corporate information and bank account numbers of its Line Pay member merchants are being stored in a computer in South Korea. 

The computer is owned by Naver Corp., a South Korean information technology company, which effectively controls Line through its stake company.

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

The computer is used to store transaction information related to the Line Pay smartphone cashless payment system.

The stored data include users’ records of money received and spent and information related to payment and money transfers.

But names, addresses and bank account information of Line Pay users are stored in a computer in Japan, Line officials said.

There are about 86 million monthly Line users in Japan.

Line, headquartered in Tokyo, released a statement on March 17 disclosing that Line Pay users’ transaction information is stored in the computer in South Korea, as well as all photos and videos posted to Line’s Talk service.

The Line Pay service is operated by Line Pay Corp., a Line subsidiary headquartered in Tokyo.

An official of Line’s parent company, Z Holdings Corp., said, the Line Pay service is “a system to be expanded internationally” and therefore “the server is based abroad” and users’ information is stored separately in Japan and South Korea.

Line Pay's privacy policy states that the company may entrust all or a part of the collected personal data to the subcontractor within the range of achieving the users' purposes to use the services.

A Line official said the company will revise its privacy policy to better explain to users about cases in which personal information is stored in a computer abroad.

According to Line, the Line Pay service was launched in December 2014. As of December 2020, the number of domestic users is 39 million and the number of member merchants is 1.63 million.

The company has admitted 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.

In response, Z Holdings has reported the concerns over the South Korean subsidiary along with the accessing of the Japanese computer by employees at a Chinese subcontractor to the government’s Personal Information Protection Commission.

The commission and the telecommunications ministry have asked Line to file a report within a month's time on how it handles users' personal information. 

Harumichi Yuasa, a professor at the Institute of Information Security in Yokohama, said, “Information about wealth and payments is extremely highly private and is related to property rights.”

Yuasa said the cases may entail “a serious invasion of privacy” and the company “needs to investigate if there has been illegal access outside of the entrusted business.”

A representative of Line Pay declined to comment on the matter.

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

Related News