It is becoming more and more common for Chinese people to travel abroad. Internet access abroad mostly relies on physical SIM cards, overseas roaming, or the use of overseas travel eSIMs. A survey by the Consumer Foundation found that nearly 70% of the home networks are different from those of the operators. They call on the government. There is currently a lack of consistent standards for relevant information disclosure. The competent authorities should study and establish necessary standards and require operators to clearly disclose on the sales page at least information including the actual telecom operator providing the service, whether roaming is used, the data transmission structure, and the third place it may pass through.
Deng Weizhong, chairman of the Consumer Foundation, said that in June this year, the Information Security Administration of the Ministry of Digital Development pointed out that the extremely low-priced overseas travel eSIM may direct users' network traffic to servers in third places or even specific countries, and then forward it to the local network. When users enter sensitive information such as account numbers, passwords, and credit card information under an unencrypted connection, or network traffic passes through areas with high network monitoring capabilities, relevant Internet access records and unencrypted data may face the risk of being intercepted, collected, or monitored.
In August this year, the Consumer Foundation randomly sampled overseas travel eSIM products sold through different online sales channels and selected 6 groups of 30 overseas travel eSIM products according to the Tourism Department's top six overseas destinations: Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand. Each group carried out sampling and testing of overseas travel eSIM products. Among them, 8 of them could not be installed due to expired QR codes. A total of 172 valid samples were entrusted to the Telecommunications Technology Center (TTC) for testing.
The test found that among the 172 valid samples, only 48 (27.9%) had the network belonging to the destination country marked on the product, and the remaining 124, or 72.1%, the network belonging to the destination country did not belong to the destination country. Among them, South Korea and China were the most obvious. Among the valid samples, not a single eSIM's network belonged to the local telecom operator. In comparison, 23 (88%) of the eSIM in Hong Kong belonged to the local operator.
Further analysis of the test found that the bearer network is highly concentrated in a small number of operators, 40% of which belong to China's state-owned telecommunications groups. Among the 172 valid samples, the attribution networks belong to 17 operators, but the distribution is extremely uneven. The top three operators account for 64.5% in total, and the remaining 14 operators account for 35.5%. In other words, even if consumers purchase eSIMs through different sales platforms, with different brands and prices, the bearer networks behind them are still concentrated in the same group of operators.
The Consumer Foundation said that comparing the information published by operators on their websites, the cooperative telecom operators disclosed by the sales platform are often inconsistent with the actual measurement results. Among them, 118 telecom operators disclosed were different from those tested, 20 were not disclosed, and only 34 were consistent with the test results. Consumers often have to arrive at the local area to complete the activation before they know that the actual connection is from a local telecom operator, or the network is provided through roaming services in a third-party country, making it difficult to assess the possible security risks they may face.
Deng Weizhong called on the government to explain why the actual issuance of tourism eSIM by telecommunications companies should fall into the "other important matters" in Article 5 of the "matters that should be recorded and not recorded in the standardized contract for online transactions such as retail industry". However, there is still a lack of consistent standards for relevant information disclosure. The competent authorities should study and establish Necessary standards require operators to clearly disclose information on their sales pages, including at least the telecom operator that actually provides services, whether roaming is used, the data transmission structure and the third places it may pass through. If the operator fails to implement this, the competent authority may impose sanctions in accordance with Article 56-1 of the Consumer Protection Act.
Deng Weizhong pointed out that overseas travel eSIM issuers and sales platforms should also assume the responsibility for information disclosure, and should not only focus on price as the main appeal, while ignoring consumers' right to know about network security and personal data protection.
Deng Weizhong advises consumers that before the government has carried out substantial supervision and the disclosure of operator information is not complete, if consumers have higher information security needs, they can give priority to international roaming services provided by domestic telecom operators, or directly purchase eSIM products provided by local telecom companies; during use, avoid logging into online banking, entering credit card information or processing other sensitive information without confirming network security, and try to use HTTPS encrypted websites or VPN and other security measures. After returning to the country, it is also recommended to close the used eSIM immediately.
