Punish buyers as well as sellers to cut personal info profit chain

WITHIN A WEEK of a homebuyer in Beijing completing the deal to purchase an apartment in early June, the man reportedly received at least 20 calls from interior decoration companies, as well as about 100 text messages from furniture and electric device shops. These companies knew almost everything about the transaction: His name, the address of his new house, even the exact time of the deal. Beijing News comments:

Obviously, someone has leaked the man's information to these companies. According to insiders, sometimes within hours after a buyer purchases a property, details of the deal will be sold to decoration companies and furniture shops.

Insiders also revealed the price of the personal information they sell, which ranges from up to 8 yuan ($1.17) a piece to as little as 0.5 yuan. As an indication of the scale of the problem, a suspect on trial in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, was found to have illegally obtained 35 million pieces of personal information, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison.