Be vigilant! "Insiders" reach out to personal information

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In recent years, the issue of citizen privacy data leakage has become prominent, and the security and protection of personal information have attracted the attention of the whole society. Data shows that industry insiders have become the main source of personal information leakage for citizens. Criminals have repeatedly committed crimes through the convenience of their positions and technological iteration and upgrading, with "highly sensitive information" accounting for a prominent proportion of the personal information types of citizens involved in the case. In this regard, the court severely punishes industry insiders and calls on all parties to jointly build a strong defense line for information security.

Using "collision database" methods to steal credit reports from others, illegally handling mobile phone numbers for telecommunications fraud, querying and selling passenger flight tracking information

Currently, personal information has become an important factor of production and social wealth. At the same time, the problem of citizen privacy data leakage is prominent, and industry insiders have become the main source of leaking personal information of citizens.

How can information be stolen by an "insider"? Where does the data flow after being leaked? Why do related crimes persist? Recently, the Beijing Higher People's Court reported on the trial of criminal cases involving infringement of personal information of citizens and issued typical cases, calling on all parties to jointly build a strong defense line for information security.

The problem of highly sensitive information being stolen is prominent

According to statistical data such as trajectory information, communication content, credit information, and property information, the above-mentioned "highly sensitive information" accounts for a prominent proportion in the types of personal information of citizens involved in criminal cases of infringing on personal information that have been concluded by Beijing courts in the past five years. Nearly one tenth of cases involve sensitive information such as accommodation information, communication records, and transaction information, with mobile phone numbers and ID numbers accounting for the largest proportion among various types of information.

In a typical case, Qin, an employee of a certain airline, and Li, an employee of a certain technology company, illegally obtained flight information from multiple passengers, including celebrities, and sold it to others, taking advantage of their work convenience, resulting in the infringement of personal information such as the whereabouts and identity documents of many unspecified citizens.

"In recent years, there have been malignant incidents caused by highly sensitive information leakage nationwide, which not only infringed on the rights and interests of individual victims, but also had a significant negative impact on the psychological security of the public." Sun Lingling, Vice President of the Beijing High Court, said that criminal cases that infringe on such personal information should be given special attention to prevent secondary risks.

In another case, the two major criminal gangs upstream and downstream conspired to infringe on the personal information of citizens, forming a black and gray industrial chain.

In this case, the upstream criminal gang illegally obtained and sold the candidate's mobile phone number and social account, while the downstream criminal gang sent fraudulent information related to exam assistance to the candidate group and carried out telecommunications network fraud, resulting in financial losses for the candidate and affecting the normal enrollment and examination environment.

"The crime of infringing on citizens' personal information is related to other illegal criminal activities. Excluding intermediate links such as buying, selling, and exchanging, 39.6% of the involved information is used for illegal or even criminal activities, such as illegal withdrawal of provident fund or handling of credit cards, telecommunications network fraud, unfair competition among peers, violent debt collection, deposit theft, extortion, kidnapping, intentional injury, etc." Sun Lingling pointed out.

New technologies make criminal methods more covert

It is worth pondering why industry insiders can repeatedly commit crimes?

"More than half of the defendants in the case have a relatively fixed workplace or occupation. According to the source and flow of personal information, the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information covers various industries such as finance, education, transportation, communication, logistics, and job seeking." Sun Lingling said.

Sun Lingling introduced that employees of companies, enterprises, and institutions who have access to a large amount of personal information of citizens can illegally access and download it through direct contact with personal information, or indirectly use their positions or work relationships to ask others for help in searching and transmitting it, or directly implant data crawling software and programs into the computer backend system of their own units. "As long as personal information flows into the 'black market', it may be subject to a large number of duplicate transactions."

In the case of Hu and others infringing on personal information, Hu hired staff members from a communication operator, Ren and Lu, as agents through Zhang, to use Zhang's provided identification documents for mobile phone numbers for telecommunications network fraud, with a total amount of approximately 1.7 million yuan.

"In this case, Ren and Lu knowingly provided assistance to others for committing crimes through the use of information networks, resulting in a large number of mobile phone numbers being used for telecommunications network fraud and a particularly large amount of fraudulent money, which is a serious offense and constitutes the crime of aiding information network criminal activities." Xiao Jiangfeng, the presiding judge of the First Criminal Trial Division of the Beijing High Court, introduced.

In addition, technological upgrades and iterations have significantly improved the speed and volume of illegal information acquisition, and criminal methods have become increasingly covert. For example, in the case of Shen's infringement of citizen credit information, as a financial practitioner, Shen took advantage of his position and used a "database collision" method to obtain the username and password of a certain bank's personal credit system, stealing more than 1100 user personal credit reports.

Sun Lingling pointed out that with the widespread use of information technology tools such as "Trojan" programs, "silent" plugins, and "crawler" software, it is not uncommon to arbitrarily and quickly capture information data and then abuse or leak it. According to statistics, nearly one-third of the cases involving individual citizen information come from technological theft. At the same time, "dark web spaces" have gradually become active venues for criminal transactions, and payment methods have evolved from real currency to virtual currency.

Punish industry insiders with severity and severity

China has always insisted on cracking down on industry insiders. In June this year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued a notice calling for strengthening the coordination between criminal prosecution and public interest litigation prosecution, and severely cracking down on the illegal activities of industry insiders leaking personal information of citizens. On August 10th, the Ministry of Public Security announced the crackdown on illegal and criminal activities that infringe on citizens' personal information. In the past three years, public security organs across the country have anchored the source of internal leaks in the industry and dealt a heavy blow to the industry's "insiders", capturing more than 2300 industry insiders such as telecommunications operators, insurance companies, and express delivery companies.

According to a judge from the Beijing High Court, in recent years, the industry's "insider" team work model has become increasingly mature. Some "internal and external collusion" crimes can even form a full chain criminal gang that obtains, trades, realizes, and illegally uses personal information. At the same time, unit crime is becoming increasingly common in the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information, and can even achieve top-down line management and division of labor from decision-making to division of labor and specific implementation.

"In response to the above phenomenon, the Beijing court strictly punishes the behavior of industry" insiders "leaking personal information of citizens in accordance with the law, with a focus on cracking down on cases that infringe on personal high sensitivity and sensitive information, personal information of special groups such as minors, and bulk personal information. For example, the Chaoyang District People's Court of Beijing focuses on exploring the application of employment prohibition clauses in key industries, increasing the cost of crime for industry employees, and making punishment and warning education equally effective." Sun Lingling said.

How to build a strong defense line for information security? Xiao Jiangfeng reminds society and the public to effectively enhance their awareness of personal information security protection, and to guard against the use of personal privacy data by illegal elements, which may cause unnecessary losses to themselves and others. At the same time, enterprises should further enhance their social responsibility, improve management systems, and collect and use personal information of citizens in accordance with the law and regulations.

Chen Dandan