Earlier on Sunday, China's cyberspace regulator ordered app
stores to stop offering Didi's app after finding that the company had illegally
collected users' personal data. "The Company expects that the app takedown
may have an adverse impact on its revenue in China," the company said in a
statement.
The removal of Didi's app, which does not affect existing
users, comes days after Didi made its trading debut on the New York Stock
Exchange in an initial public offering that raised $4.4 billion.
In a June filing, Didi reported revenue of about 42.2
billion yuan ($6.5 billion) for the three months ended March 31. Of that, 39.2
billion yuan came from its China mobility division while about 800 million yuan
came from its international business.
Didi has a dominant position in the online ride-hailing
business in China and operates in 4,000 locations across 16 countries.
Didi said it will strive to rectify any problems, and will
protect users' privacy and data security.
Since late last year, Chinese internet regulators have
cracked down more sharply on the country's tech giants for violations of rules.
The Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling
Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper, said in a Chinese-language
commentary on Monday that Didi's apparent "big data analysis"
capability could pose risks to the security of individuals' personal
information.
"No internet giant can be allowed to become a super
database of Chinese people's personal information that contains more details
than the country, and these companies cannot be allowed to use the data however
they want," Global Times said.
Didi gathers vast amounts of real-time mobility data
everyday. It uses some of the data for autonomous driving technologies and
traffic analysis.
In its IPO prospectus, Didi said "we follow strict
procedures in collecting, transmitting, storing and using user data pursuant to
our data security and privacy policies."
A senior Didi executive said on Saturday that the company
stores all China user and roads data at servers in the country and it is
"absolutely not possible" that it passed data to the United States. -Reuters