Gray business in big data industry： using crawler software to steal and sell personal privacy information
At the Cyber Security Week Data Security Summit held recently, Chen Jixue of the Central Network Information Office pointed out that the prosperity and hidden worries of the big data industry coexist, and the illegal acquisition and sale of personal information is extremely rampant.
Some big data companies use a crawler technology, which can steal customers’ online addresses, delivery addresses, chat records and search records, and then provide expensive services such as positioning and "reporting".
With the penetration of the Internet into people’s lives, a large number of websites, apps and client software are constantly emerging. While using these network products, people need to actively or passively provide all kinds of information and data and save them on the servers of websites and apps. This information becomes available and exploitable data.
Some big data companies use public data to portrait users and provide them to downstream businesses to develop "precision marketing" business, which is formal and legal. However, a few big data companies are not satisfied with this. They cross the red line and make huge profits by stealing personal privacy information, turning "portraits" into "photographs" and taking candid photos.
Recently, big data companies such as Datatang, Qiaoda Technology, Magic Scorpion Technology and Xinyan Technology have been investigated and dealt with by the public security organs. They are suspected of using crawler technology to steal and sell personal information, which has caused netizens to suffer greatly. The huge profits of gray business have made some big data companies lose their professional ethics and completely become pests on the Internet.
inform (against/on sb)
Han Gang (pseudonym), who graduated from a university in this city, works in a startup company in Beijing. His business is sales, and his customers are hospitals all over the country. At present, his main customers are concentrated in several provinces and cities in North China. During his work in this company, Han Gang was a key employee, and he completed nearly half of the company’s sales.
In the second half of 2019, the company decided to reduce the salary, and the salaries of Han Gang and several salespeople were reduced by 40% or more. At the same time, he was transferred by the company to the southwest region to explore new customers, while the original stable customers were taken over by relatives of the founder of the company.
Han Gang felt that the company was unkind to him. Because going to a new place to open up new customers, the difficulty and intensity of the work have increased several times, and there may be no performance in the first few months, let alone commission, and the mortgage next month may not be paid. Faced with the economic pressure and the company’s abnormal practices, Han Gang had the idea of resigning.
He registered as a member on the recruitment website, submitted all kinds of information, filled in his resume online, and resigned after he was ready to find a new job. However, Han just delivered his resume to several companies online, and in the evening, he received a phone call from Beijing, informing him to suspend his work and be seconded to the laboratory as an experimenter. Han Gang was not qualified for the experimental work at all, so he had to resign after one month. Fortunately, with the accumulated customer resources, he soon found a new job.
A question puzzled him. Why did the company transfer him from an important position as soon as he had the idea of resigning, forcing him to leave voluntarily? After working in the new company, a colleague of his former company told him that in fact, the founder of the company bought the "employee resignation warning" service from an internet technology company. As long as he paid 1380 yuan, when the employees in the company submitted or updated their resumes on several major recruitment websites, the founder of the company would receive an email reminding him that the employee might resign.
Hearing the news, Han Gang felt very uncomfortable. Whether to resign or not is of great importance. Such private information can be grasped by the company in advance, and I feel monitored. In the workplace, employees and the company are actually in an unequal position. Once the company can monitor employees’ intention to leave, the company can force employees to leave voluntarily by transferring their posts, increasing the difficulty of work, and even making things difficult for employees.
In order to avoid the information about finding a job being leaked again, Han Gang decided to defend her rights. He called the recruitment website and asked how his company leaked his information to the person in charge of the original company. As a result, it was learned that the company operating the recruitment website did not provide the service of "employee turnover warning", but a small Internet technology company provided this service similar to "informer".
On the Internet, Han Gang found a large number of similar defenders, all of whom reflected that their company knew the information as soon as they submitted their resumes on the website, and then they were forced to leave their jobs. Some tech-savvy victims revealed that companies that provide "informer" services steal a large number of resume data of natural persons through crawler software, especially updating the date information of resumes, and then generate an informer email and send it to relevant stakeholders.
"Crawler software and ‘ Inform ’ The service is so irritating that netizens have no privacy at all. I am surfing the Internet now, just like streaking. I always feel a pair of eyes staring at me behind the screen of my mobile phone and computer. " Han Gang said. Anxious and scared, he is now suffering from paranoia. When using the computer, he will always subconsciously check whether the camera is on, suddenly turn off the computer, pat it a few times, and then walk around the room for several times.
whereabouts
Nowadays, these crawler softwares can not only know "what are you going to do", but also disclose the news to others; You can also know "where are you", which is even more frightening.
Blair (a pseudonym), a young man in Baodi District of this city, has encountered such troubles. She is a well-known online celebrity. She works as an anchor on a short video platform, with more than 100,000 fans. Because of her sweet and lovely appearance, many fans rewarded her on the online platform and came to Tianjin to meet her.
Only 21 years old, she is a little worried about the fanaticism of fans on the Internet. She doesn’t want to disclose her address, lest fans really come to Tianjin to block her and meet her. Unexpectedly, a fan insisted on seeing her and bought a train ticket to Tianjin. She declined politely, and in order not to be found by the other party, she rented a new house to live in.
A week later, a stranger shouted outside the door, "Hello, your takeaway has arrived." Blair, who likes online shopping and often orders food online, didn’t expect that it was a fan on the Internet who came in. The uncle, who is over 40 years old, rushed to Tianjin from Guizhou, bought her flowers and knelt down to propose marriage when he entered the door. This sudden scene frightened Blair. She steadied the uncle and said that she would take him out to a restaurant for dinner. In a crowded place, she won’t be personally harmed. The fan also let his guard down, and soon told Blair that he had finally determined Blair’s position by purchasing the location-finding service online for 3,000 yuan.
It’s only been a week since I moved to my new residence. Even my parents don’t know the news. How do people on the Internet know it? Fans said that when buying a location-based service, online sellers said it was a big data analysis technology, which used crawler software to capture the delivery address left by the target person Alipay when shopping or the address left by the online ordering to determine the address of the target person. When I heard that, Blair suddenly realized that she had indeed shopped online this week and ordered takeout. It seems that all this information has been mastered by big data companies.
There are still many people whose address information has been stolen, one of whom is the victim of "routine loan". They generally reported that they changed their phone number and address because of the intimidation of the collection phone and the blocking of the door by the evil forces, and the result was quickly found by the collection staff, which made them feel scared.
Zhang Hua (a pseudonym), a young man in this city, borrowed 7,000 yuan from an App last year, and as a result, he encountered a "routine loan". In less than three months, even his interest rolled to 40,000 yuan. The collector called his parents and brother and abused them maliciously, which made him very embarrassed. Zhang Hua simply hid, stopped the original phone and rented a house in Langfang, Hebei.
As a result, in less than a week, several "social people" with tattoos and big gold chains came to the door, punched and kicked him, and forced him to pay back the money. He had to give them the only 7,000 yuan in cash. He was very puzzled. How did his whereabouts get out? The other person smiled and told him, "Do you use your mobile phone? Do you use it for shopping, chatting and ordering takeout? As long as you use your mobile phone, you will leave a trail and you can’t run away. "
Hearing this, Zhang Hua couldn’t wait to smash her mobile phone.
It’s called portrait, but it’s actually a sneak shot
These network services, which can determine the whereabouts of the target person, are still being used by commercial investigations and private detectives. On the surface, some big data companies claim to "use public data analysis" to make user portraits; But in fact, in order to meet the precise needs of customers, they use a crawler technology, which directly shoots and grabs. This technology can steal customers’ online address, delivery address, chat records and search records, and then provide expensive services such as positioning and "reporting".
It is obviously illegal to use crawler technology in this way, and the public security department has investigated relevant big data companies. On September 6th, the West Lake Branch of Hangzhou Public Security Bureau assembled more than 200 police officers to arrest Magic Scorpion Technology suspected of infringing citizens’ personal information, and arrested more than 120 people involved. The company has developed Alipay crawler, WeChat crawler and other products. Alipay crawler only needs to scan the login "QR code" with Alipay, and the user’s real name, mobile phone number, delivery address, shopping information in the past year and even the amount of each transaction can be crawled in the background. Wechat crawler can get the transaction records of WeChat official account and Wechat that users pay attention to.
In August last year, a number of senior executives of Datatang Company, the first company in the big data industry, were controlled by the public security. After investigation, the company transmitted more than 130 million pieces of citizens’ personal information every day within 8 months, and the amount of data was extremely huge. The company claims that it has four data sources, one of which is crawling data for web crawlers.
In April this year, the recruitment data company Qiaoda Technology was seized and all employees were taken away by the police. According to the survey, the company illegally obtained the resume information of 220 million natural persons, and there are more than 1 billion address books, and it holds the data of social relations, organizational relations and family relations related to this. Combined with resume, address book and more than 100 billion other user data obtained from outside, Qiaoda Technology claims to have more than 800 million cognitive data of natural persons. In other words, more than 57% of China people’s information is in the database of Qiaoda Technology.
Recently, in addition to the above-mentioned scorpion technology companies, companies such as Xinyan Technology in Shanghai and Cunxin Data Technology in Hangzhou have been investigated. The Gongxinbao project operated by Cunxin Technology has obviously crossed the red line by obtaining citizens’ social security information, Xuexin.com information, mobile data and Alipay data through crawler technology.
On September 17, at the National Cyber Security Publicity Week Data Security Summit Forum, Chen Jixue, Director of the Strategic Standards Division of the Cyber Security Coordination Bureau of the Central Network Information Office, pointed out that the prosperity and hidden worries of the big data industry coexist. On the one hand, a large number of public data are waiting to be developed; On the other hand, the illegal acquisition and sale of personal information is rampant.
On May 28th this year, the Central Network Information Office issued the Measures for the Management of Data Security (Draft for Comment). Among them, Articles 15 and 17 propose that if a network operator collects important data or personal sensitive information for business purposes, it should file with the local network information department and specify the person in charge of data security. From this point of view, once the Data Security Management Measures are officially implemented, the crawler business that obtains personal information without authorization and filing will surely die. (Reporter Li Jisen)