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.

Although some reports say Qiaoda used big data technology to steal personal information, the key point here is not technology.

Qiaoda got the personal information from the CVs by co-working with other employment websites and the address books of smartphone users by collaborating with third-party smartphone apps. Then it used algorithms to match the two sets of information to build a database that companies would pay to get.

This entire process hardly demands the use of big data technology. And a programmer with even a little experience can match the CVs with the address books.

So those demanding stricter control on the use of big data technology have missed the point, for the violation of privacy in this case has nothing to do with the abuse of big data technology. Instead, the employment websites and smartphone apps should be better regulated so they cannot share people's personal information with Qiaoda and other companies. And Qiaoda should be held accountable for its misdeeds to deter other companies from following in its footsteps.