The popular buying and selling service Taobao, owned by the Chinese super-conglomerate Alibaba, has suffered a huge data leak, to say the least. Over a billion data points have been collected by a so-called web spider.
- No data has been leaked online about the users
- Found hidden information with web spider
- Imprisonment for the guilty
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Web spider found hidden information about users
According to information on the website 163.com, a so-called web spider, a so-called computer script, which visits websites and searches for information that is saved locally, has found hidden information that ordinary visitors cannot see.
Among other things, the web spider has identified and saved usernames and mobile numbers for users worldwide.
Information has been found and stored for several months. Between November 2019 and July 2020, the web spider could operate undisturbed before anyone reacted.
The actor behind the collection of user data should be a company that uses affiliate links to Taobao to make money. The employer and a programmer have been sentenced in China to three years in prison for the incident.
Read more: Personal information about 500 million LinkedIn users is sold on the black market
No data should have been leaked about the users
As far as we know today, no collected user data has been leaked from the company. All data must have been for internal use only, which is positive for all affected.
It is worth noting that neither Alibaba nor Taobao have committed crimes.
That is the opinion of a Chinese court that acquits both companies. At the same time, Alibaba has acknowledged that it is their fault that a web spider was able to collect data on their service.
