Personal Information Protection Commission Begins Third Round of Pre-Consultations for Data Portability Requests

Not a Total Ban on Scraping
Transition to API-Based Methods Planned

The Personal Information Protection Commission is conducting additional pre-consultations to support the conversion of existing scraping services to safer transmission methods, ahead of the expanded implementation of the right to data portability.

Song Kyunghee, Chairperson of the Personal Information Protection Commission, is speaking at the full meeting of the Personal Information Protection Commission held on July 29, 2026, at the Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Jo Yongjun

On August 11, the commission announced that it would accept third-round applications for pre-consultations on behalf of data subjects until August 31.

Not only existing eligible applicants, but also small businesses and those who do not meet MyData qualifications are eligible to apply. The commission will review factors such as the service type and security level to examine practical and feasible safety management measures.

During its first and second trial operations, a total of around 700 pre-consultation requests were submitted by 370 companies and institutions. In the first round, 150 requests were made by 70 entities, and in the second, 550 requests were made by 300 entities.

Scraping is a method by which an agent accesses the system of a relevant institution using a user's ID, password, or authentication information to retrieve data. While this allows for fast and convenient service development, it can also lead to situations where authentication information is entrusted to third parties or where access might be granted to more personal information than necessary.

According to the commission, the purpose of this policy improvement is not to uniformly prohibit the use of scraping, but rather to ensure maximum utilization of data and services while enhancing the safety of personal information transfers. In the long term, there are plans to transition to a more technically controlled transmission method based on application programming interfaces (APIs).

The commission stated, “Existing scraping services will not be discontinued all at once starting August 20. Through pre-consultations between public institutions and agents, scraping may be allowed within agreed-upon parameters. Companies and institutions that request pre-consultations during this application period will be able to temporarily continue existing methods while consultations are underway.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.