Scary data breaches in China: Information about the 'fertility' of more than 1.8 million women leaked

A recent breach of the leaked online unprotected database in the world's most populous country has revealed a list of 'creepy' information collected on more than 1.8 million women in this country. This database is frightening in that in addition to the basic information such as name, age and address . it also contains data listing the 'fertility' status of women.

In addition, this open database also contains some other relatively private information such as phone numbers, GPS coordinates, URLs to photos, addresses, ID numbers, marital status, or details. related to politics and education. Taken together, all these details have drawn an alarmingly gloomy picture of 'excessive' data collection activities in China.

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Victor Gevers, a famous Dutch security researcher, happened to discover this terrifying data warehouse on Friday and March 8 while conducting searches towards the database store. Unprotected material in China. This experienced security expert did not hide his shock and immediately posted a tweet about this issue:

'There is a shortage of women in China. Therefore, an organization has started to build a personal database of more than 1.8 million women with all kinds of detailed information such as phone numbers, addresses, education status, location, number. ID, marital status and worse, 'BreedReady' status. This is hard to accept! '

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By sharing his findings, Victor Gevers hopes to make a warning to the people on the list so they can take appropriate measures.

In general, in this database, the most controversial data field is BreedReady (which may indicate whether the woman is of childbearing age). Most likely the goal behind this list is to see how many women are still fertile.

Victor Gevers' discovery also showed that the youngest girl in the database was only 15 years old, in which the youngest female BreedReady state was 18 years old, the average age was above. 32 years old and the oldest woman marked BreedReady status is 39. The list of databases includes women aged 0-95 years, including single status of 89%, divorced 10% , and 1% of widows. About 82% live in Beijing. Breeders will be evaluated BreedReady = '1'.

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1. There were 12,449 serious data breaches recorded in 2018, an increase of 424% compared to 2017

The Dutch researcher has not yet been able to clearly identify the owner of this open database, but his findings have shocked a lot of observers, especially in the field of human rights. After the leak, this database is locked and can no longer be accessed via the internet.

No one can deny the severity of privacy related to information stored in this database. Some optimists believe that this is most likely a list of essential information gathered by an online dating service suitable for people in Beijing, according to the criteria and details provided by main participants.

However, there are also many opinions that this may be an activity of collecting personal data with negative purposes, especially in issues related to population when the rate is unbalanced. Gender due to the one-child policy in China is increasing because of the idea of ​​giving priority to male children considered to be able to support their parents better when they get old, leading to 60 million men in the country. This family may not get married.

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This is not the first time Victor Gevers has uncovered data breaches in the world's most populous country. Just over a week earlier, Dutch security researchers also found 18 unprotected databases, with data coming from six major social networking platforms in China. The content includes information about names, ID numbers and photos, GPS location, network information, public conversations, privacy and phone numbers. In fact, China is second only to the United States in terms of the number of open-type databases that can be found through online searches, an alarming reality for information security and private rights. private.