Young, well-educated doing invasion of privacy crimes, legal system warns

Some young people with high education backgrounds have been found committing invasion of privacy crimes, said Fengxian District People's Procuratorate on Thursday.

The district's procurators have charged 20 people in 12 cases related to infringement of citizens' personal information since 2019. Among them, 16 people were arrested.

Apart from the high education background and low age of criminal suspects, the cases also showed features of specialized criminal means and diverse criminal purposes.

For example, in a typical case revealed by the procurators during a press release on Thursday, a 26-year-old man with a bachelor's degree, surnamed Li, was sentenced to three years jail, suspended for three years, and fined 10,000 yuan (US$1,542) by Fengxian District's People's Court on August 23, for illegally obtaining and providing individuals' information to others.

The procurators said that Li developed a mobile app and released it on an online forum for free download. After the app was installed by users, it would steal the installer's album photos without the user's authorization. It would also automatically upload and store them to the backend of the server set up by Li.

Li then sold those photos and information to another online platform.

Li's app stole a total of 1,751 photos, some of which contained more than 100 items of personal information of citizens, including face information, names, ID numbers, contact information, and home addresses, according to the procurators.

He also acquired more than 81 million items of personal data, some of which contained biometric information, and shared it in a QQ chat group, a popular China social networking platform, to show his ability to obtain information.

The court ordered Li to apologize to people whose privacy was infringed by his actions on state-level media within 10 days from the effective date of the judgment. He was also ordered to delete the app and all data he had acquired.

The public prosecution of the case was broadcast live online on the day of the trial to improve public awareness about protecting personal information, said the procurators.

They reminded netizens to stay alert about their personal information, and pay particular attention to identifying illegal websites, applications, and tiny programs.

In the future, the district's prosecutors will severely crack down on criminal acts that infringe on personal information of special groups, such as children and the elderly, as well as in key areas such as education, medical care, and old-age care.