"We are XX company commissioned by the National Information Center. You own a car of the XX brand, and we would like to invite you to our company for a questionnaire survey. We will give you a 200-yuan fuel card as a gift." This was a call recently received by a reporter. The name, phone number, car model, and license plate number all matched. It can be confirmed that the reporter's car owner information has been sold.
In fact, each of us may have received similar calls. Just recently, the mobile phone numbers of 80,000 Wenzhou bosses were publicly offered for sale online for 280 yuan. According to the seller, he has contact information for 450,000 business owners in Zhejiang Province. After sampling confirmation by the reporter, 85% of the information was accurate.
Source: 1.55 million car owner information "exposed"
On July 22, two auxiliary police officers from Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces were sentenced to two years and one year six months respectively in the first trial by the Cangnan County Court for illegally obtaining citizens' personal information due to downloading car owner information from the public security intranet and selling it to others. They were each fined 20,000 yuan. Liu Meixia, who bought the car owner information from the two auxiliary police officers and then resold it to others, was also sentenced to one year and ten months in prison for the same crime and fined 20,000 yuan.
It is understood that this case in Wenzhou is quite typical: in previous cases of citizens' personal information leaks, those usually caught were often just intermediaries in the buying and selling chain. However, in this case, those involved were the source of the resale. More importantly, in similar cases solved domestically so far, there have not been many cases where government agency staff stealing citizens' personal information were directly investigated.
According to police investigations, Zheng Fei from Guangchang County, Sichuan Province, was an auxiliary police officer at the Jiachuan Detachment of the Guangchang County Traffic Police Brigade, while Su Bingjue from Cangnan County, Wenzhou, was an auxiliary police officer at the Lingxi Detachment of the Cangnan County Traffic Police Brigade. These two people used their work convenience to steal car owner information from the vehicle management system and then resell it for profit.
According to the court's verified facts, around August 1, 2009, a person with the online name "Guangdaodao" (real name Mao Chuanlong, handled separately) found Zheng Fei on the Internet. Mao Chuanlong taught Zheng Fei methods to steal and download information and provided him with web page data download software and download demonstration videos, etc., requiring him to download vehicle owner information from the public security intranet and sell it to himself.
In about a month thereafter, Zheng Fei took advantage of his position as an auxiliary police officer at the Jiachuan Traffic Police Detachment to query and download approximately 1 million pieces of vehicle owner information, which he sent via the Internet to Mao Chuanlong.
After October 2009, due to the upgrade of the national traffic management information inquiry system, Zheng Fei, without a public security digital identity certificate to log into the public security system, decided to become a middleman himself and find someone else to steal car owner information.
At the end of November 2009, Zheng Fei, under the online names "Yeren" and "Xiaotian," found Su Bingjue, who was working as an auxiliary police officer at the Lingxi Detachment of the Cangnan County Public Security Bureau Traffic Police Brigade through the Internet. In less than two months afterward, Su Bingjue took advantage of the unattended evenings to repeatedly use stolen public security digital identity certificates to log into the national traffic management information inquiry system of the public security intranet, querying and downloading 5.57758 million pieces of vehicle owner information, all of which were sent to Zheng Fei via the Internet.
Thus, these two auxiliary police officers alone stole more than 1.55 million pieces of car owner information and sold it to the middleman Mao Chuanlong and other customers.
The leakage of 1.55 million pieces of information has thus occurred. An informed person said that this information can be continuously and repeatedly resold, and after two or three years, it will be very difficult to trace back to the source of the information leak.
Out of Control: Modern People Plagued by "Information" Harassment
This case judged by the Cangnan County Court, of course, has implications beyond the courtroom. In life, almost all of us have suffered harassment caused by information leaks.
Recently, Chen Sheng, who just registered a branch company in Hangzhou, found that the company's fixed-line telephone frequently received calls from some training companies offering training services. "They even know the full name of our company and the registration location clearly."
Chen Sheng came to Hangzhou to work in 2008. That May, he bought a new car, and the first calls offering "warm-hearted service" were from various insurance companies. "From big ones like Ping An and Pacific Auto Insurance to various unknown smaller ones, especially during the time when car insurance needs to be renewed, the calls are more frequent."
Then came various automobile clubs. "Some called, some sent text messages, trying various ways to get you to join the club."
After purchasing two houses in Hangzhou, Chen Sheng received daily calls and text messages from various real estate agencies and decoration companies, asking if the new house needed to be decorated, if it should be resold, rented out, or used for a mortgage loan, and whether new houses or shops should be purchased. Locations ranged from Hangzhou and Jiaxing within Zhejiang Province to Weihai and Qingdao in Shandong, covering all over the country.
Chen Sheng was annoyed and almost certainly judged - his information had been sold.
But, the troubles caused by the sale of information might not stop there. Mrs. Xia from Hangzhou is a full-time housewife, and her husband runs a large business in Hangzhou, handling all household matters.
One day last year, Mrs. Xia received a strange call, asking her to transfer money to a certain account. Mrs. Xia thought it was the usual fraud call and ignored it. However, a week later, the caller rang again, calling her name directly and reciting a string of place names. Mrs. Xia was shocked; what the caller said completely matched her family's old address.
"We usually pay great attention to protecting our privacy and rarely disclose our home address." Regarding this disturbing call that frightened her, Mrs. Xia finally reported it to the local police station. "Although the other party did not take any action in the end, I am still very uneasy about my personal information being leaked."
Another Mr. Zhou's situation is laughable yet pitiful. He has always been busy with work, and when he receives harassing calls, he usually hangs up impatiently. Afterwards, he found that he received more and more calls. After "reflection," he suspected that because of his bad attitude, the other party thought it unlikely to do business with him and therefore resold his information, leading to more companies knowing his information.
Black Chain: One Piece of Information Continuously Resold, Price Soars
In the chain of theft and resale of citizens' personal information, the most lucrative part is often not the source but the middlemen.
For example, Auxiliary Police Officer Zheng Fei from Guangchang County sold part of the information at a price of 0.05 yuan per piece to Mao Chuanlong.
After acquiring this batch of information, Mao Chuanlong resold part of it at a price of 0.15 yuan to Chen Tian (handled separately), earning 65,000 yuan.
Tasting the sweetness, Zheng Fei also became a middleman himself. Auxiliary Police Officer Su Bingjue from Cangnan sold a batch of car owner information to Zheng Fei at a price of 0.2 yuan per piece, earning a total of 35,700 yuan.
Then, Zheng Fei sold part of the vehicle information he purchased from Su Bingjue and the vehicle information he downloaded himself to Mao Chuanlong, earning a total of 97,900 yuan. After deducting part of the remuneration given to Su Bingjue, he still made a profit of more than 60,000 yuan.
In early December 2009, Zheng Fei met Liu Meixia from Tangxia Town, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province through QQ, and subsequently sold car owner information to Liu Meixia multiple times at prices of 0.6 yuan and 0.7 yuan per piece. From December 12, 2009, to January 13, 2010, they transacted a total of 1.503192 million pieces of car owner information, and Liu Meixia paid Zheng Fei a total of 154,200 yuan for the information.
After receiving the information, Liu Meixia resold this batch of car owner information, earning a total of 429,900 yuan. After deducting the 154,200 yuan paid to Zheng Fei, she made a profit of more than 270,000 yuan.
Due to Auxiliary Police Officer Su Bingjue from Cangnan turning himself in on January 9, 2010, earning only more than 30,000 yuan, Zheng Fei also surrendered to the public security authorities a week later.
Subsequently, Liu Meixia was also arrested by the police.
In court, the police provided evidence such as remote inspection work records and the IP abnormal access log list from the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department.
Although this case has had a first-instance verdict in judicial terms, the harm has not ended. Liu Meixia claimed to have sold the information to some insurance companies and car enthusiast clubs, but the police did not find the downstream buyers.