THE Shenzhen International Marathon 2018 is scheduled for Dec. 16 and registration is open, but a runner identified as Ah Zhen said he was confused about the reason personal information, such as marital status, occupation, education and monthly salary, is required to sign up, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

This year’s Shenzhen marathon is being hosted by the Chinese Athletic Association and the Shenzhen Municipal Government, with support from the city’s culture, sports and tourism bureau and Wisdom Sports Competition Management Co. Ltd.

According to media reports, more than 50,000 people had signed up for the marathon eight hours after registration opened at 10 a.m. Friday.

Ah Zhen was one of the runners who was eager to sign up. Nevertheless, the experienced runner found that entering personal information like marital status, occupation, education and monthly salary was compulsory this year.

“Why would we need to disclose so much personal information when we sign up to run the marathon?” said a surprised Ah Zhen.

Ah Zhen said he takes part in three or four marathons every year and that usually registration only requires basic information like name, mobile phone number, email address, ID number and shirt size. He was worried that his personal information would be collected and sold for profit.

Some legal practitioners believe that marital status, occupation, education and monthly salary are not essential information for a marathon event. As the organization managing the Shenzhen marathon, Wisdom Sports is suspected of compulsorily collecting unnecessary personal information.

According to Wisdom Sports, the move was to make a big data analysis of runners to get a more detailed portrait of the runner group. “In this way, we will know more about Shenzhen runners and thus can provide more targeted services in the future,” said a staffer with the company.

As to privacy disclosure, the staffer said that all of the information collected through registration will be kept by the company. The information will neither be disclosed to the public nor will it be sold for profit. If a runner doesn’t want to reveal their private information, they can choose which fields to fill out at will.

If the information is to be used for dig data analysis, then Wisdom Sports should provide a privacy agreement or specify in the registration instructions that the information will be processed anonymously, said Wang Daoli, director of the cybersecurity law research center of the third research institute of the Ministry of Public Security.

The marathon organizer is offering a total of 30,000 spots, including 15,000 for the full length and 15,000 for the half length this year. The 6-km run has been canceled for this year’s event to better promote the professionalism of the marathon, according to the organizer.

Applications to register for the marathon will close at 5 p.m. Nov. 5. (Zhang Yu)