South Korea's mobile carriers will destroy some 900 million fingerprints collected from their customers over the years for ID verification purposes, the telecommunication watchdog said Thursday, amid growing concerns here about protecting private data.

The Korea Communications Commission said the three mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Inc. - have agreed to delete the biometric information scanned from users' identification cards within this year.

"Mobile carriers admitted that the volume of fingerprints they've collected is in excess," a KCC official said. "They plan to destroy 80-90 percent of them by the end of this year."

Every Korean citizen aged 17 and over holds an ID card with his or her thumbprint stamped on the back. It is collected by mobile carriers when they make copies of the front and back of users' ID cards for new subscriptions.

Providing private data has been customary for Korean consumers.

In cases such as when they sign up at a website for the first time, it's almost taken for granted that they disclose their personal details even if the information is prone to leaks and can be abused for theft.

For mobile carriers and other IT firms, the problem with holding such piles of personal data can be further complicated when they were forced to hand over the info to law enforcers for investigative purposes.

Although local laws stipulate companies should give necessary personal data to the police or prosecution upon request, there has been growing criticism about providing the confidential information without consent, as protection of private data has become an important issue.

In January, a Seoul court made a ruling on a class action suit against mobile carriers that the telecom companies must compensate users for handing out their personal data to the law enforcement without informing them. (Yonhap)