Chinese software developer develops web crawling software to hack user data from popular Chinese shopping site Taobao More than 1.1 billion in just eight months.
The Wall Street Journal reported on June 15 (US time), citing a ruling by a district court in Henan province. Central China says the software developer began collecting user data on Taobao, part of Alibaba, in November. 2019 through a program that was created as a Web-crawling. The data downloaded includes usernames, phone numbers, customer feedback and more about the use of the sales website. This one online product.
Web crawling or Web crawler is a type of software that is designed to learn everything about the Internet. To be able to download that information automatically.
However, Taobao confirmed that important information such as user passwords were not downloaded, but the company did not. Specify the number of affected users. In addition, the company added that no user information was sold to third parties and there was no Economic losses as well.
Taobao, one of Alibaba’s largest and most popular online retailer, has about 925 million users. Months.
The Chinese software developer, nicknamed “Lu”, sent the phone number he collected to his employer. Employers who run promotions for sellers on Taobao use that information to target customers. Both were sentenced to more than three years in prison each.
