Scanning code to order food is one of the consumption patterns in the era of digital economy. It can not only make consumers pay attention to the official WeChat account, but also make merchants better retain customers, which can be described as a win-win situation. However, because this consumption pattern involves the collection and processing of consumers' personal information, it also requires businesses to respect consumers' right to choose independently in order to truly achieve a win-win situation. If merchants insist on paying attention to the official WeChat account, they will inevitably step on the legal red line and face legal responsibility.
Article 9 of the Consumer Protection Law stipulates that consumers have the right to choose their own goods or services. In other words, consumers have the right to choose the goods or services they are satisfied with according to their needs, intentions and interests. In order to scan the code to order food, merchants forcibly bind to order food and pay attention to the official account of WeChat, which directly deprives consumers of the right to choose their own consumption methods.
In fact, consumers don't like to scan the code in food and beverage consumption, mainly because they are worried that it will pose a security threat to personal information. This is because in the process of code scanning, merchants will use this to obtain sensitive personal information such as consumer name, address book, WeChat avatar, nickname, region and gender. If the merchant does not handle it properly, it will inevitably cause security risks to consumers' personal information. According to the provisions of the Personal Information Protection Law, the handling of personal information should follow the principles of legality, justness, necessity, honesty and credibility, and personal information should not be handled by misleading, cheating or coercion. The law prohibits merchants from obtaining consumers' personal information by paying compulsory attention to the official WeChat account, which is prohibited by the Personal Information Protection Law.
Undeniably, the consumption pattern of scanning code to order food has the advantages of convenience and rapidity, but the implementation of this consumption pattern should abide by the basic rule of law principle of not infringing consumers' personal information. In reality, many merchants are still stubborn when they know that the official WeChat account may face legal risks, mainly because most consumers are unwilling to take it seriously according to law. The consumer in Deyang, Sichuan Province, faced with the outrageous behavior of merchants forcibly paying attention to the official WeChat account infringing on their personal information, resolutely took up legal weapons to discuss, which is a manifestation of the awakening of the rule of law. The court supported its claim according to law, which embodies the judicial value orientation of protecting consumers' personal information and promoting the good application of digital technology.
Merchants force consumers to scan the code to order food, and the court decides that it constitutes infringement, which is also a rule of law course. Consumers and businesses should understand the profound meaning of protecting personal information by the rule of law through this case, and relevant departments should also make good use of such vivid cases to carry out legal publicity to ensure that scanning code and ordering food can be standardized within the framework of the rule of law that does not infringe on consumers' personal information.