Asian Tech Press (Jan 19) -- User privacy is protected on its Olympics app, a spokesperson for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics said, refuting security concerns about the software.

There have been reports that the MY2022 app, which is officially released by the Beijing Organising Committee and required to be used by all participants, has security flaws.

A spokesperson for the Beijing Organising Committee for the Beijing Winter Olympics said in an interview with China's state-run Xinhua News Agency that all of its actions are in strict compliance with the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China and other relevant laws and regulations.

The MY2022 app is a multi-functional mobile application that provides a variety of information services for people registered for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, including information on weather, food and beverage, accommodation, transportation, event news and medal lists.

And the app is required for COVID-19 prevention and control, and a similar application was used for the Tokyo 2020 Games. According to the epidemic prevention manual for Beijing 2022, all overseas registered Olympic-related personnel are required to proactively report their health status daily through a health monitoring system starting 14 days prior to their entry.

The spokesperson said that the MY2022 app is not mandatory to be installed on private cell phones and that registered people can fill out health monitoring information by visiting the health monitoring system's web pages.

The user information used for the various functions of the Olympics app is clearly stated in its user agreement and privacy policy, and has been reviewed by the International Olympic Committee.

The first time when using the relevant services to call a phone's functions, the MY2022 app will request authorization from the user,which will be in the form of a separate pop-up window to seek the user's consent. And the user can turn off the authorization at any time in the system settings and it will not affect the operation of the software.

"The MY2022 app has also passed reviews by overseas mobile application stores such as those of Google, Apple and Samsung. And personal information in the application is encrypted to ensure the safety of personal privacy," the spokesperson added.