The way personal information is masked on parcel shipping labels is expected to be unified nationwide. As masking rules that had differed by courier are standardized, the risk of piecing together shipping label details to expose the recipient's name or contact information is expected to drop significantly.
The Personal Information Protection Commission said on the 11th that it held its 20th plenary meeting on the 10th and approved improvements to strengthen personal information protection measures on parcel shipping labels.
To strengthen the level of personal information protection on parcel shipping labels, the Personal Information Protection Commission, with cooperation from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, inspected over the past eight months 19 parcel service operators (hereinafter couriers) registered with the ministry, Korea Post, and major shipping label printing solution providers. The fact-finding inspection found that while the businesses inspected applied masking to personal information when printing parcel shipping labels, the masking positions and methods were not unified by courier, resulting in insufficient protection of personal information.
Since 2021, the Personal Information Protection Commission has guided couriers to mask the middle character of names and the last four digits of phone numbers to protect personal information on parcel shipping labels. However, as each business devised its own voluntary protection plan and some applied different rules, multiple masking methods ended up coexisting. When masking rules differ by business in this way, there was concern that if multiple couriers delivered to the same person at the same time, combining information across labels could expose the recipient's name or contact information.
Accordingly, the Personal Information Protection Commission recommended that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which is in charge of registering and managing couriers and protecting consumers, prepare an "improvement plan for parcel shipping label masking." Based on this, the ministry plans to draw up within the year "unified rules for masking personal information on parcel shipping labels" (hereinafter unified rules) that contain a standardized masking method after gathering opinions from couriers.
Along with this, the Personal Information Protection Commission recommended that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport provide guidance and oversight so the unified rules can be applied to couriers registered with the ministry. It also asked that the same rules be applied when labels are printed through external systems linked to couriers, such as large shopping malls and label printing providers.
The Personal Information Protection Commission said, "This measure is meaningful in that we worked with relevant ministries to prepare improvements so that personal information can be protected more safely in parcel services, which are closely tied to people's daily lives with more than 6 billion shipments annually," adding, "We will continue to work with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport through related implementation checks to foster a safer personal information protection environment in the parcel service sector."
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said, "To strengthen the protection of parcel users' personal information, we will prepare unified masking rules for parcel shipping labels based on the methods currently used by many couriers and then recommend that all couriers use them," adding, "We will continue to work to improve the convenience of people who use parcel services."