Pair jailed for trading private information of families with newborn infants

Two men involved in the illegal use and the purchase and sale of the private information of families with newborn infants were handed jail sentences.  

A man, surnamed Qiu, was jailed for three and a half years and fined 70,000 yuan (US$10,578) by the Jing’an District People’s Court for selling more than 450,000 pieces of private information to an insurance company worker, surnamed Teng, between 2014 and May this year. 

Qiu, who had been working for a company that photographed newborn infants, said he had collected the personal information of its clientele, such as the phone numbers of new parents.  

He sold the information to Teng for 0.50 yuan per piece of information. Using the information, Teng phoned the new parents to sell them insurance products.  

Police arrested Qiu on June 23, while Teng turned himself in on August 1. 

The authorities confiscated Qiu's illegal earnings, while Teng was handed a four-month jail term and fined 1,000 yuan.

In a similar case, a man, surnamed Yan, was handed a three-year jail term, fined 60,000 yuan, and given probation of four years for selling more than 200,000 pieces of newborn infants' personal information.

Yan was working as a manager of a local insurance consultancy. He said he had access to customers' private information, including the names, birthdays, and addresses of newborn infants and their parents' contact details. 

Each month he collected about 10,000 pieces of customers' private information and sold them to an insurance company worker. Yan illegally earned about 50,000 yuan between July 2015 and November last year, the court said. His illegal earnings were confiscated.