China is among the world's worst countries for SIM card registration laws, and among the most invasive when it comes to privacy, according to a recent report by UK-based technology website Comparitech.

The report details how approximately 150 countries around the world require some sort of mandatory SIM card registration, forcing new users to provide information that ranges from an address to actual biometric data such as facial scans and fingerprints. However, these were not the only factors used to determine the country's ranking. Other aspects used to tally how invasive each country's laws are included: whether the data is stored by mobile phone providers or shared with government agencies, whether or not this data could be accessed by law enforcement agencies, for how long such data is stored, and whether any specific data protection legislation exists to protect users' information.

Who are the biggest abusers of data?

The countries were ranked on a 20-point scale, with 20 points being the worst possible score. Tanzania was at the top of the list with 19 points; followed by Saudi Arabia at 17; North Korea and Uganda at 15; Lebanon, Pakistan, Singapore, and Sri Lanka at 14 points; and finally China in fifth place with 13 points, alongside Bahrain, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nigeria, Tajikistan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Many countries do not require mandatory SIM card data registration at all, including the entire North American continent (US, Mexico, and Canada), the UK, Ireland, and other European countries such as Portugal, Liechtenstein, Sweden, and Ukraine.

The report also includes information about penalties imposed on both providers and customers who breach the laws – in North Korea for example, the penalty is the "three years in prison and a heavy fine (or something far more severe)" – as well as the terms of data storage (for how long and where), and how many SIMs can be registered per user. Interestingly, China does not currently impose a limit on that last point, unlike other countries with high scores in the ranking.

Facial scanning to become the norm?

Since December 2019, China has required new SIM card customers to provide a full facial scan as part of their biometric data, a development that made big waves in foreign news, even though China is not the only country to do so, with both Singapore and Nigeria also requiring this step. In July 2019, Thailand’s army ordered telecommunications companies operating in the country's three most southern states, which are majority Muslim, to require their customers to submit photos for biometric facial recognition, a move which affects some 1.5 million phone numbers.

While Tanzania, which ranked the world's worst on this list does not yet require facial scanning, it enlisted 150 of the country's top celebrities and KOLs to help encourage existing customers to register their biometric data before the deadline of Dec 31 last year.

Despite the risk of data breaches, fears that facial recognition technology will be used for racial profiling, and that flawed systems could lead to wrongful arrests, the trend toward tightening of biometric security laws seems to suggest that facial scanning will become the norm rather than the exception in years to come.

One extreme solution? Move to one of the 45-odd countries that do not yet require any registration at all – the Bahamas are supposed to be very nice this time of year...

To browse the full list of countries, their rankings, and additional data, see the report here.

READ: The Tech that Excited and Terrified Us in 2019

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Email: annahartley@thebeijinger.com

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Images: the Beijinger, Comparitech