Chinese authorities bust private data stealing syndicate, detaining 20 Apple employees

THE personal data of iPhone customers is highly prized on China’s black market due to the belief that Apple customers are more likely to be wealthy.

A statement released by police did not specify whether the data belonged to Chinese or foreign Apple customers. Picture: Johannes Eisele

WE’RE required to trust a lot of companies with our personal data these days and a case in China highlights how sometimes it’s people who we don’t ordinarily expect who breach that trust.

Privacy concerns over personal data usually centre on companies taking unlawful liberties with our data or hackers pilfering those details for nefarious ends.

But authorities in China have uncovered a much more mundane kind of abuse. Police detained a number of Apple employees for running an underground operation in which it’s alleged they stole peoples’ personal data from Apple’s internal system and sold it to criminals on the black market.

Of the 22 suspects detained by police in the sting, 20 were Apple employees who allegedly used the company’s internal computer system to gather users’ names, phone numbers, Apple IDs, and other data, which they sold as part of a scam worth more than 50 million yuan ($AUD 9.76 million).

The information of iPhone customers is highly prized on China’s black market due to the belief that Apple customers are more likely to be wealthy.

A statement released this week by police in the southern Zhejiang province of the country did not specify whether the data belonged to Chinese or foreign Apple customers.

Following months of investigation, the statement said, police across more than four provinces — Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian — apprehended the suspects over the weekend, seizing their “criminal tools” and dismantling their online network.

The suspects, who worked in direct marketing and outsourcing for Apple in China, allegedly charged between 10 yuan ($1.95) and 180 yuan ($35.14) for pieces of the illegally extracted data.

A man tries an MacBook Pro laptop computer in an Apple store in the East Nanjing Road shopping area of Shanghai, China. Picture: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the story and pointed out that the case will test new cyber security laws in the country.

On June 1, China introduced changes which make it harder for companies to avoid punishment in cases like this. The change was met with concern from some foreign companies which now face the potential of fines and other punishment by regulators unless they can prove their systems weren’t to blame for leaks.

Data stealing syndicates like this are not uncommon in China.

In December, an investigation by the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper exposed a black market for private data gathered from police and government databases.

Reporters successfully obtained a trove of material on one colleague — including flight history, hotel check-outs and property holdings — in exchange for a payment of 700 yuan ($136).

- With AFP