A number of major Chinese cities are to stop the use of facial recognition and other forms of unauthorized collection of people's personal identity as a new Civil Code comes into effect on Jan. 1. Companies, government-sponsored institutions, industrial associations and chambers of commerce will not be allowed to collect biometric data from people such as an image of their face, a recording of their voice or fingerprints from next year, the city of Tianjin said on Dec. 1. Property sales offices cannot collect scans of visitors' faces without their permission, the Bureau of Housing Security and Property Administration in Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu province said a few days ago. China will be adopting a new Civil Code next year that deems people's names and biometric data to be private information. The act of collecting this data can only be done in legal and proper ways without the use of force, it says.