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China society
ChinaPeople & Culture

China wakes up to wide web of online data leaks and privacy concerns

  • Some 468 million pieces of personal information were mined from financial lending platform databases and sold to smaller lenders in latest breach
  • In country where apps and state surveillance are unavoidable, many worry about security, but some ‘just believe or assume that all hope is lost’

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Surveillance cameras loom over a street in Akto, south of Kashgar, in the heavily policed western Xinjiang region. Photo: AFP
Laurie Chen

Chinese internet users got a wake-up call in November, when a state media report revealed that 468 million pieces of personal data had been leaked.

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It sparked a public outcry, revealing growing concerns about privacy and protecting personal information online in a country that is increasingly reliant on technology, and where state surveillance is an everyday part of life.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that the data was illegally mined from financial lending platform databases by a web of small-scale tech firms. Those firms then sold the information to other small-scale lenders for as little as 0.1 yuan (1 US cent) per piece. The worst offender, third-party credit assessment firm Beijing Koala Credit Service, illegally obtained more than 100 million pieces of personal data.

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The problem is apparently widespread in China. Ninety-five per cent of respondents to a survey by Southern Metropolis Daily last month said their personal data had been stolen. Nearly half believed e-commerce and financial lending apps had serious privacy issues, and almost 80 per cent were concerned that their facial recognition data could be leaked from apps. The newspaper did not say how many people were surveyed.

The government cracked down on more than 600 apps that collected illegal and excessive amounts of user data without consent last year, but the move did little to stem concerns about information security and privacy in China, where 854 million people are online.

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