Measures are needed to preempt theft and sales of personal info

THIRTEEN EMPLOYEES of a courier service company in North China's Hebei province were arrested recently for selling more than 40,000 pieces of private information of their clients. China Youth Daily comments:

Three of those arrested by the police are middle-level executives of the company and the others are delivery personnel. They form a complete industrial chain with the middlemen, and buyers, who are mostly salespeople of health foods companies and real estate agents.

The private information they trade is not restricted to telephone numbers and home addresses, but also their clients' e-commerce records, which is of commercial value to the buyers.