Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com8 news on March 13, now the rise of purchasing agents, online celebrities, anchors and other industries, because of the particularity of their industry, often their Wechat accounts have a huge amount of customer resources, at this time, the owner wants to sell these accounts, can the deal be done? In this regard, the people's Court of Jiangyin City has a typical case of buying and selling Wechat accounts.

According to the official account of Jiangyin people's Court, Cheng, an online celebrity in the medical and beauty industry, has tens of thousands of fans and many high-quality customer resources on Wechat. In September 2019, she transferred nine WeChat accounts (each with 2,000 to 3,000 Wechat friends) to Boss Zhao for business operation at a price of 500000 yuan. She agreed to pay 300000 yuan on the same day and 100000 yuan each on March 22 and September 22, 2020.

On the day the agreement was signed, Boss Zhao paid 300000 yuan as promised, and Cheng also delivered 9 WeChat accounts to Zhao and completed the WeChat password and binding cell phone number information change. But Zhao did not pay the remaining 200000 yuan, Cheng sued to the court, asking Zhao to pay the balance and bear the liability for breach of contract. Jiangyin Court held that the Wechat account sale agreement between the plaintiff and the defendant was invalid and decided to reject all the plaintiff's claims.

The court held that Cheng and Zhao, both engaged in the medical and beauty industry, transferred nine Wechat accounts in fact to transfer customer resources. Cheng's Wechat record also involves a lot of customer identity information, including ID card number, date of birth, address, medical records and so on. It is the existence of this huge amount of customer information that becomes the reason why Zhao spends a high price on Wechat account.

Cheng previously obtained the relevant personal information of his customers, and the reason why he was able to obtain this information is to provide his own goods, services, consulting, goodwill and even personality as a guarantee of reputation. On the other hand, Zhao, who obtains this information through purchase, can sell products or services on the basis of the goodwill accumulated by Cheng without express premise, which not only makes potential consumers have wrong subject identity, but also does not take the knowledge and consent of the information subject as the legitimate basis. Article 1038 of the Civil Code stipulates that "personal information may not be illegally provided to others without the consent of a natural person, except where a specific individual cannot be identified and cannot be recovered after processing." It is against the law for both parties to transfer WeChat customer resources.

In addition, the court mentioned another question arising from this case: assuming that Cheng's WeChat account does not involve other people's information, it is simply WeChat account itself, can it be bought and sold?

The court held that WeChat is real-name authenticated and generally binds to information such as the name, identity card number, mobile phone number and bank card number of a natural person, as well as recording personal characteristics, social relations, and whereabouts rules through Wechat avatars, moments, Wechat movements and other forms, and can identify natural persons alone or in combination with other information. Wechat friends have identity and basic trust on personal WeChat accounts with real-name authentication. Therefore, the act of selling the WeChat account you use to others without being told, and the behavior that the buyer publishes information such as moments as the original WeChat account user is essentially a kind of fraud, infringing upon the right to know of Wechat friends and harming the trust interests of Wechat friends, so the act of transferring WeChat use rights to others without notice is invalid because of infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of a third party.

CTOnews.com learned that the court also mentioned that Wechat has the characteristics of convenience, concealment, finance, and information relevance, and that criminals use Wechat to carry out fraud, gambling, pyramid selling and other illegal and criminal activities have shown a high incidence in recent years. In order to protect social and public interests and citizens' right to information, even if individual Wechat accounts have certain economic value, they should not buy and sell freely.

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