Beijing: A Chinese website has sparked controversy by posting information from 2 million people's business cards without their consent and winning 5 million visits a month, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.
Mingpian.com, named after the Chinese word for business card, offers people's mobile phone and office numbers and email and company addresses for free, Xinhua said.
''Many of the name cards were contributed by our staff through their personal connections,'' it quoted the website's press officer as saying.
Viewers can accumulate points by contributing names or inviting friends to log on to the site, the website said.
''I never revealed my information to this website and it violates my privacy,'' it quoted Mao Qinglin, marketing manager for the personal computer giant Lenovo, whose name was the most clicked IT contact on the site, as saying.
Xinhua said the website had deleted information about some protesting card owners but insisted its practice provided ''valuable business information for China's sales and marketing people and helps companies recruit competent employees''.
Another Chinese website, www.ucloo.com, which had boasted that it could sell information on more than 90 million people, was under heavy public pressure to delete the content, Xinhua said.
A booming cyber-world has grown up alongside China's fast-diversifying society, now largely freed from once-omnipresent state controls.
But the government has begun drafting a new law to protect personal information and to reinforce current provisions on privacy in its civil code, Xinhua said.
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