The world wide web of deception

Updated: 2011-12-30 07:57

By An Baijie (China Daily)

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The world wide web of deception 

Massive hacking of Web portals, causing leakage of classified information about Internet users, has raised concerns about safeguarding privacy in virtual space

BEIJING - IT engineer Wang Youhua has become "extremely busy" these days, ever since reports of the hacking of some well-known websites surfaced in mid-December. Some of the registered members of these portals had their private information leaked.

"IT engineers in our company feel under pressure after the information leakage," he told China Daily on Thursday. "The leakage has not only put the netizens' privacy at risk, but also undermined the credibility of many websites."

Wang, 29, an employee of a Web portal who has been working in the IT industry for nearly four years, said he had never seen such large-scale private information leakage.

Anti-virus company issues red alert

The Qihoo 360 Technology, an anti-virus company that claimed to offer free Internet security services to more than 300 million netizens, issued a red alert on Dec 22, saying that the databases of many websites were hacked recently, causing the leakage of more than 50 million Internet users' registered accounts and codes.

Chinese Software Develop Net (CSDN), one of China's biggest online communities for IT programmers, admitted being hacked on Dec 21, leaving about 6 million users' information leaked.

The Tianya.cn, one of China's most popular online forums, was also reported to have been hacked, causing exposure of information related to as many as 40 million users.

Ning Caishen, a renowned screenwriter, complained on Sunday on his micro blog that his Tianya account had been hacked. Many other micro blog writers expressed similar concerns on the same day.

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