Key points in this article
A privacy wake-up
The charging app on your phone may be 'over-asking'. In May 2026 the National Cybersecurity Alert Centre flagged 41 apps for unlawful personal-information collection; charging apps including GAC Energy, Mammoth Charge, Star Charge, the home-charger assistant and Baiju Charge made the list. Problems clustered: undisclosed collection rules, collection without consent, over-scoped harvesting of location/contacts/SMS in unrelated scenes, forcing consent for non-essential info, and no effective account-deletion channel—turning 'find a stall' into a privacy gamble.
Where the line is
The legal floor is drawn. The Personal Information Protection Law and Data Security Regulation require apps to collect on 'lawful, legitimate, necessary' grounds. In charging terms, a compliant platform: uses location 'and discards it', not storing long-term; encrypts card numbers and passwords, never plaintext; tiers staff access by role (CS vs O&M) to curb abuse; deletes or anonymises data past the retention period. So asking once for location to 'find nearby stalls' is reasonable, but background-tracking location and reading contacts crosses the line.
Yantai's small steps
For Yantai owners a few habits cut privacy risk to the floor. Dongdian Huichong's community and public charging advises: download charging apps only from official channels, not obscure mini-programs; set location to 'while using'; never pay over public WiFi; periodically check logged-in devices and change passwords on anomaly; when done, actively deregister and request data deletion. Convenience and privacy both matter—that is reassuring green travel.