According to the results of consumer protection survey recently released by the China Household Appliance Service Maintenance Association, with the rapid development of the Internet and the popularization of smart home appliances, consumers’ personal privacy is leaked, and smart home appliance software services are difficult. There are service flaws in recalled products and consumers’ right to information is violated. New types of infringement problems surfaced.
The survey collected 24.73 million pieces of data covering 891 brands and network appliance service platforms including refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, air purifiers, color TVs, water heaters, and smoke cookers. The survey results showed that the infringement of home appliance services was presented. Polarization and corporate infringement of consumers’ rights and interests continued to increase, with an increase of 4.73% over the previous year. Among them, the household appliance service maintenance economy with a business scale of less than 10 accounted for 96.41% of the infringing parties, and became a hard-hit area with high infringement.
In recent years, smart appliances are rapidly entering consumer life, and various types of new types of infringements have emerged. Household appliance companies and service providers hold a large amount of consumer information. The disclosure of information and illegal use have become new types of infringement. It is worth noting In addition, a large amount of consumer data has become the source of 'sucking gold' for individual companies, irrespective of data breached due to data management misconduct. It was deliberately sold by companies to third parties for profit. Survey data show that 52.84 % of consumer feedback, after purchasing certain products, anonymizing sales of harassment calls followed.
Software services for smart home appliances have also become blind spots. Many manufacturers often provide only three packs of services for hardware. The built-in software maintenance and upgrade services for smart devices are very vague. Under the premise of normal main functions, more than 40% of products have no explicit or Does not provide software for the three packs of services.