Hebei police crack down on hundreds of millions of pieces of citizen data in a case of infringement of citizens' personal information
Xinhua News Agency, Shijiazhuang, 23 Nov (Reporter Yang Fan and Zhao Hongyu) the reporter learned from the Handan City Public Security Bureau of Hebei Province that the police cracked a major case of infringement of citizens' personal information supervised by the Ministry of Public Security during the "net 2019" special operation. So far, a total of 20 criminal suspects have been arrested, 15 citizen information centers have been destroyed, and hundreds of millions of citizen data have been seized across the country, involving more than 20 provinces.
In March 2018, the police of the Network Security Detachment of Handan City Public Security Bureau received a report from a citizen, Hu Mou, that they often received sales calls from a biotechnology co., Ltd in Beijing for no reason, each time selling different health care products. This upset him, who had been suffering from neurasthenia.
Subsequently, the police disguised as the masses communicated with the marketers by telephone, and when the other party announced some information for deceiving the masses to buy "health care products," the police tracked down the line and knocked out Feng Mou, a native of Cixian County, Handan City in one fell swoop. Criminal gangs selling counterfeit health care products by telephone have seized more than 220000 articles of personal information about citizens illegally purchased and obtained from them.
The police expanded their investigation according to clues, and a network of trafficking in personal information about citizens across the country surfaced. Subsequently, the case was listed as a special project supervised by the Ministry of Public Security. After the study and analysis of the special case team, the arrest team carried out a unified network collection operation in more than 20 provinces.
Up to now, the task force has arrested 20 criminal suspects and seized a large number of electronic crime tools such as computers, mobile phones, and hard drives involved in the case, involving hundreds of millions of pieces of citizen data covering all parts of the country, effectively curbing all kinds of crimes caused by them.