China's Largest Shopping App Taobao Leaks 1.1 Billion Customer Records

Gang Arrested for Stealing 1.18 Billion Customer Records via Web Scraping
Data Security Expected to Tighten Ahead of September Enforcement of Data Protection Law

[Asia Economy Beijing=Special Correspondent Jo Young-shin] Chinese media reported that over 1.1 billion user information records were leaked from Taobao, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group. Taobao is the largest shopping application (app) in China.

According to Chinese internet media Pengpai on the 17th, Mr. Lu from Henan Province extracted 1.18 billion Taobao user IDs and phone numbers through web scraping (the act of extracting data) using self-developed software over eight months starting in 2019.

Photo by Baidu Capture

Additionally, Mr. Li created 1,100 WeChat chat rooms using this information, posted advertising links, and earned 340,000 yuan (approximately 60 million KRW) as commissions from users' product purchases.

According to a recent court ruling disclosed by the Shangqiu City Court in Henan Province, both Mr. Lu and Mr. Li were sentenced to three years in prison. They were also fined.

Earlier, Taobao reported the customer information leak incident to the police in August last year. In a statement released the day before, Taobao stated that the leaked customer data was not sold to any third party and no economic losses occurred.

They also emphasized, "Taobao invests significant resources in combating unauthorized scraping on our platform," adding, "We proactively detected and resolved this scraping incident."

Meanwhile, China plans to enforce the 'Data Security Law' starting this September, which will strengthen government control over data.