Buying of personal information also illegal

A JOURNALIST IN SOUTH CHINA'S GUANGDONG PROVINCE managed to acquire a colleague's personal information, ranging from real-time locations and flight numbers to hotel check-in records, from an "online merchant" at the cost of just 700 yuan ($101) as part of an investigation into the selling of personal information. But as the Ministry of Public Security said on Monday the journalist broke the law as purchasing other people's information also constitutes a crime. Beijing News commented on Tuesday:

It is abhorrent that the leaking of personal information has reached such levels despite all the efforts to keep it in check.

Of course, people should be more aware of the latent dangers and make better efforts to protect their personal information, but that cannot be used as an excuse for the authorities not to do more supervisory and enforcement-related duties in this regard.