Personal-data sales develop into a terrifying plague
August 9, 2010 SCMP A5
Summary:
After the concerns relating to the sales of Octopus cardholders’ personal data,a court in Shanghai’s Pudong district was making a landmark ruling over the sale of personal information, the nine people involved had sold 30 million items of personal data in Beijing and Changsha. But the case did not make the headlines of either the state media or the more popular internet news portals. And the truth is that any personal details put on a sales contract or a bank form can become commodities that are sold and resold many times. Moreover, telephone scams have become rampant across the mainland but there have been few reports about the police undertaking any serious attempt to purse the source of the data.
Reflection:
I am shocked by the level of abuse and illegal use of personal data in mainland, that people gave their own pirate information to those companies with trust, but they just think of earning money as their most concern, it is such a selfish act that I felt ashamed of being a Chinese. And I am totally agreed with the writer that ’’some may be just nuisance cold sales calls, but others are truly FRIGHTENING because the callers or senders appear to know very personal family details’’, that I get first hand information from my friend which happened in Hong Kong, that when she was in the office , the phone rang and a man’s voice telling her that he was from the 12free mobile phone company and their company want to update the system, so please turn off her mobile for 3 hours. My friend did as he told. But then after about an hour as she was having general meeting, she thought something went wrong and turned on her mobile, she found that she had lots of miss calls, and so she called back her parents, and meanwhile her astounded parents were taking money from the bank and thought that their daughter was being kidnapped as their parents got a phone call with her...