It's theft, not misuse of big data technology

QIAODA GROUP, a Beijing-based human resources company which claims to have the largest curriculum vitae database in China, has been reportedly selling the CVs illegally to headhunters and other companies. Zhou Xin, an associate researcher at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, comments:

In its previous commercial plan, Qiaoda said it had information on more than 220 million CVs, and the address books stored on about 1 billion people's smartphones. And, according to reports, in 2017 the company earned 411 million yuan ($61 million) in revenue by "sharing" data with other companies - that is, by selling them.

This, if true, means Qiaoda has misused the personal information and violated the privacy of many people. Perhaps that's why police detained the whole Qiaoda team in mid-March, according to media reports, and the company's senior executives are still under detention.