China View reports: 

Nearly half of the 938 people polled in four major Chinese cities have fallen victim to personal data abuse, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a government think tank, said Tuesday after an 11-month study.

CASS said about 42.5 percent of the residents of Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao and Xi’an have experienced violations of their personal data. The most common abuse is that companies or salesmen use the phone numbers of individuals without their knowledge to text or call to sell products. [...]

A prime cause of personal data leaks was the inappropriate handling of client information by banks, insurance companies, real estate companies and similar organizations, CASS said.

Wang Xiaomei, the author of the CASS report, said people had to present IDs card in many situations such as applying for a job or driving license, entering a government organization or even attending a movie premiere.

“This makes it easy for personal information to leak to those who want to make a profit from it,” said Wang.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 and is filed under Identification, International, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Possibly related posts:

• Oklahoman and Tulsa World: State profits from residents’ data
• New York Times: Human-flesh Search Engines in China
• Wall Street Journal: China Ratchets Up Web Privacy Fight