The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a draft of China's first set of national standards for the protection of personal information on Feb. 10, Beijing News reported.

The application for the national standards, entitled "Guide for Personal Information Protection in Information Security Technology and Public and Business Services," are currently being reviewed.

The guideline sets out both general principles and specific requirements with respect to the collection, processing, transmission, utilization and management of personal information in various information systems.

Among those is the "least use" principle. It says that when business companies collect personal information, the range of the content should not cover areas that are not given for the original purposes. Once the personal information has been used, it should be deleted at once.

What remain worrying, however, are available enforcement measures for the new standards, with which their effectiveness is heavily depended on.

(China.org.cn April 6, 2012)

《新京報》報道，今年2月10日，工業和信息化部公布了我國首例有關個人信息保護的國家標準草案。

《信息安全技術、公共及商用服務信息系統個人信息保護指南》日前已正式報批國家標準。

該指南對個人信息處理包括收集、加工、轉移、使用和管理等環節，提出了總體原則和具體要求。

其中一條為“最少使用”原則，意指商業公司在獲取個人信息時，不準索要超越使用目的的個人信息，并要求在目的達到后立即刪除。

但令人擔憂的是，這項新標準能否奏效，很大程度上取決于該指南執行力度如何。