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)

《新京报》报道，今年2月10日，工业和信息化部公布了我国首例有关个人信息保护的国家标准草案。

《信息安全技术、公共及商用服务信息系统个人信息保护指南》日前已正式报批国家标准。

该指南对个人信息处理包括收集、加工、转移、使用和管理等环节，提出了总体原则和具体要求。

其中一条为“最少使用”原则，意指商业公司在获取个人信息时，不准索要超越使用目的的个人信息，并要求在目的达到后立即删除。

但令人担忧的是，这项新标准能否奏效，很大程度上取决于该指南执行力度如何。