20 Apple distributors arrested in China after profiting millions from illegal sale of user data

Somewhat compromising news for Ma on the other side of the world. According to the newspaper South China Morning Post, 22 people were arrested in Zhejiang, province in eastern China, accused of sell information from users of the Apple ecosystem to third parties 20 of which apparently were employed by Apple distributors in the country.

Employees took advantage of their access credentials to Ma's databases to capture users' confidential information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers and more and sold this data for prices ranging from 10 to 180 yuan (about R $ 5-85). In total, the gang managed to profit about R $ 25 million (!) illegal transfer of data before it is discovered and arrested.

It is still unclear whether the accounts exposed by officials are limited to China or whether people around the world have been affected; the number of Apple IDs that were invaded by the group is not yet known. Chinese police have spent the past few months tracking down invaders across four provinces in the country until they managed to carry out the arrests over the past weekend, seizing their tools and dismantling their online network.

Going back to the first sentence of this article, you should probably be cursing me asking yourself why this news would be compromising for Apple, since the company was not hacked and the criminals' actions were totally marginal (and by default) from their official operations. Well, let's make a parallel with cockroaches: they say that if you see a cockroach in your house, it means that at least 100 more of them are hidden there. With this type of crime, it is not very different: for each illegal operation dismantled by the police, there are dozens or hundreds of them that are still out there, providing our information to criminals.

The point I want to get to: this recently arrested gang did not have to hack into anything illegally to get data from Apple users, its members simply had authorization to access this data, probably related to support, and decided to take advantage of it to profit improperly. . So, is it not time for Cupertino to rethink its structure of supplying data to partners (which, at least for all of us out here, is a complete mystery)? Personal data spread across the country, as we saw in this phone poll. Ninja, it's not just a joke and Apple, which values ​​(or says it values) the privacy of users, should be the first to take the most severe measures possible to curb this type of thing.

via Cult of Mac