Information Source Characteristics of Personal Data Leakage During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: Observational Study.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, in the period of preventing and controlling the spread of the virus, a large amount of personal data was collected in China, and privacy leakage incidents occurred.

Objective: We aimed to examine the information source characteristics of personal data leakage during the COVID-19 pandemic in China.

Methods: We extracted information source characteristics of 40 personal data leakage cases using open coding and analyzed the data with 1D and 2D matrices.

Results: In terms of organizational characteristics, data leakage cases mainly occurred in government agencies below the prefecture level, while few occurred in the medical system or in high-level government organizations. The majority of leakers were regular employees or junior staff members rather than temporary workers or senior managers. Family WeChat groups were the primary route for disclosure; the forwarding of documents was the main method of divulgence, while taking screenshots and pictures made up a comparatively smaller portion.

Conclusions: We propose the following suggestions: restricting the authority of nonmedical institutions and low-level government agencies to collect data, strengthening training for low-level employees on privacy protection, and restricting the flow of data on social media through technical measures.