Number rental business: an hour’s charge is as low as 3 yuan, and it’s hard to prevent minors
"60-year-old man is ranked at three o'clock in the morning", who is the real player behind it?
With the implementation of the new regulations for the strictest prevention of addiction, although Tencent responded that in half a year, this account was triggered 17 times and all passed the face recognition verification of Tencent's health system, but it still did not eliminate the "other person's face" and rent from the outside world. Number of guesses.
Such a voice is not groundless.
In recent years, the number rental service has formed an industrial chain.
In addition to minors, some players who love high-end equipment but don't want to build their own will also rent or buy accounts, and some gamers make money by renting out game accounts.
Recently, a reporter from Beijing News Shell Finance and Economics found that all major e-commerce platforms and mobile application stores can search for game rental shops and applications. Not only are there a large number of rental accounts for each game, but also businesses claim to rent out accounts. All are real-name authentication, if you touch the anti-sink charming face verification during the game, you can get a refund.
The reporter noticed that although the rent-and-sell platform has launched a real-name verification system and emphasized that "minors cannot trade", it still provides the possibility to jump out of the anti-addiction system supervision.
In the reporter's investigation, the face-replacement software business still exists in the black and gray production platform.
According to the seller, the premium version is priced at 2,500 yuan, "90% of the pass rate has been verified. If you can survive the four major industries, you can believe in games."
In this regard, Qu Zilong, the founder of the non-governmental Internet security organization Network Jiandao, said in an interview with Shell Finance and Economics that although we are exposed to the problem of minors renting accounts, in fact, if the renting platform cannot guarantee users renting The real-name information of the account is consistent with the authentication information of the number-renting platform, so this business model of the number-renting platform is already assisting Internet users to bypass the network real-name system supervision, which is likely to cause illegal operations.
Buy and sell
More than 1,000 accounts of popular games can be rented for one hour, and the fee is as low as 3 yuan
On August 30th, new regulations to prevent minors from indulging in addiction were introduced, strictly reducing the playing time of minors, and requiring all online game companies to only be on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays from 20: 00 to 21: 00 every day One hour of service is provided to minors, and online game services are not allowed to be provided to minors in any form at other times.
In the early morning of September 13, the Shell Finance reporter downloaded the top game apps on the Huawei mobile app market game list, including King Glory, Peace Elite, Fantasy Westward Journey, Mini World, Douluo Continent, Wendao, etc. The reporter found that these All games are connected to the real-name verification system.
When the reporter logged in with a minor account, an anti-addiction notice popped up without exception, saying that the game could not be played.
However, on the Internet, you can bypass the supervision and play online games without restrictions by renting and buying accounts, giving minors the green light to play games, and making renting accounts the target of regulatory crackdowns.
Entering September, the regulatory authorities once again conducted interviews with game companies such as Tencent and NetEase and game account rental and sales platforms, requiring that minors not be provided with online game account rental and sales transaction services in any form.
According to public information, China's national defense addiction system has been activated as early as 2007, but on the one hand, restrictions have been tightened. On the other hand, industries such as renting, borrowing, and buying numbers have taken the opportunity to grow wildly to avoid addiction.
On September 13-14, Shell Finance reporters searched and found that all major e-commerce platforms and mobile application stores can easily search for corresponding shops and applications for game rental and sales.
Among them, there are more than 100 mobile games that can be rented on the rental account platform, and the number of terminal games even exceeds that of mobile games.
The reporter noticed that every game on the platform has a huge number of accounts available for rent.
For example, popular mobile games such as Glory of Kings and Naruto, as well as popular terminal games such as League of Legends and Infinite Tribulation, the platform shows up to 5000 accounts that can be rented out, and the adaptation systems include Android and Apple.
On some e-commerce platforms, many rent-a-number shops have been in operation for more than five or six years, and many merchants have paid more than 10,000 people.
The reporter browsed and found that King of Glory, Naruto, Primordial God, and Eternal Tribulation are the more popular game categories, and the rental price ranges from "free for the first order" to high-end accounts of tens of dollars an hour.
During the survey, Shell Finance reporters found that the average rental price of an account of 3 to 14 yuan per hour is more common, but for renters, the actual price paid is often lower than the book price, because many rented shops have The mechanism is that until the next tenant of the rental account is registered and the previous tenant is "topped", the tenant can always use the rental account to play games.
Shell Finance reporter purchased 2 hours of game time for a game account, and found that the actual game time exceeded 12 hours and there was no "top account" for the next tenant.
The Shell Finance reporter inquired about industrial and commercial information and found that the operating company of renting account is Anhui Daofeng Network Technology Co., Ltd.
According to the official website of renting an account, it is a domestic official renting platform with more than 50 million registered users and a high-end game account worth more than 5 billion.
"On the Internet, with its unique innovative ideas and platform anti-plug-in security technology, it provides account owners with high-quality services, does a good job of connecting users and account owners, fully guarantees account security, and at the same time fully integrates industry resources and focuses on providing users with High-quality gaming experience."
The reporter noticed that Zhihu users who were certified as "Merchant Managers of Anhui Blade Edge Network Technology Co., Ltd." once posted that as of February 2020, the number of online game users in my country reached 622 million, an increase of 10.6 million from the end of the previous year, accounting for the total netizens. Of 56.1%.
The number of tenants in the rental account has reached about 30 million, and there is still a big blank market.
The game rental account can choose a new game experience. Renting a rental starts at 1 yuan, which greatly increases the transaction volume of the rental account. You can also publish the games you don’t often play to earn rent.
"If an account owner has a lot of game accounts to rent, he can certainly make a lot of money; if he has any game account, it is normal to earn a few hundred yuan a day; an account owner who has only one account for rent and one with 100 accounts The profit of the account owner who can rent the account is naturally different." One user said.
Fortify
Facial recognition is also required for real-name ordering on the platform of renting a number
On September 13th, Shell Finance reporters logged into trading cat, renting account and other game account leasing platforms, as well as renting and selling account shops on e-commerce platforms, and found that almost all renting platforms showed a full desire to survive.
The reporter will pop up a prompt when placing an order on the rental account platform: "Due to the "Notice of the National Press and Publication Administration on Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games" and other legal requirements, please continue to place the order after completing the real-name authentication."
On the e-commerce platform, when a reporter privately chats with the customer service of the rental account, the customer service will automatically reply to the reminder that minors are prohibited from trading, such as "This store does not accept minors, and minors cannot place orders, please study hard!"
Skip the prompt. The reporter browsed popular games and found that all the accounts that can be used for rent and sale claim to have real-name authentication and will not touch the adult accounts that are anti-addiction.
Among them, the security information of the account leased on the trading cat will show that it is an "adult number", "account binding ID card" and so on.
In the rental shops on the e-commerce platform, the reporter consulted with several sellers, and they all said that these accounts can play games within normal hours and will not trigger anti-addiction measures.
From 23:00 on September 13 to 1:00 am on September 14, Shell Finance reporters used the loaned King Glory game account to continue playing for more than two hours, and indeed no facial recognition prompt popped up.
After that, when a reporter consulted the customer service, what should I do if face recognition is required if the real-name verification is encountered? The customer service said "don't test the face, just exit the game, and the balance can be refunded through Alipay."
The reporter's investigation learned that in order to bypass the threshold of minors, the identity verification information is publicly sold on the black and gray product trading platform. Minors only need to purchase unregistered identity information, or directly enter the ID cards of their parents and relatives to bypass. Real-name authentication process.
However, on September 13, the reporter tried again to rent an account as a minor through the personal information provided by the black property, and found that some account renting platforms had launched the face recognition link.
On the renting account platform, after the reporter entered the real-name identity information, a prompt popped up saying "In order to further verify your identity and prevent minors from indulging in games, face recognition verification is required." On the trading cat platform, when a reporter buys an adult When you jump to the Alipay payment link with your game account, the pop-up suggestion is "Pay after you log in by swiping your face".
However, the reporter noticed that you can log in and pay in another way.
At present, face recognition will also be triggered during the specific registration process.
After the Shell Finance reporter rented a King of Glory account on the e-commerce platform for 20 yuan, the customer service informed that since King of Glory and Chicken Eater are logged in through WeChat and QQ, the accounts that rent these games need to download the Android version of the "hands." You can log in to the game with the login key sent by the customer service after payment. After downloading, the reporter found that the “register” requires real-name authentication.
After the reporter passed the real-name authentication, the face recognition was further triggered, and the face recognition and the real-name authenticator information were not passed, and only the real-name authentication and face recognition were passed before the login could continue.
Although there are additional thresholds for renting accounts to prevent minors from "taking advantage of the loopholes", many game platforms only verify the authenticity and validity of the account when logging in to the game, and do not verify the association between the game account and the user's identity.
In Qu Zilong's view, from the perspective of compliance, the operating model of the account rental platform has long violated the basic rules of the Internet "online real-name system".
He told the Shell Finance reporter that the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Internet User Account Name Management Regulations", "Internet Forum Community Service Management Regulations" and "Internet Post Comment Service Management Regulations" in 2015 and 2017 to standardize the "Internet real-name system." It is clarified that registered users need to "backstage real name". The prerequisite for user real name is to ensure that the account user and the account real name authentication information are consistent, and the operation method of the number rental platform has "conflicted" with relevant laws and regulations.
Zhao Hu, a partner of Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, told Shell Finance reporters that game account rental is contrary to the online real-name system. Everyone should register their real-name account to conduct activities in the game to meet the requirements of the online real-name system.
"There are often other needs for renting accounts, such as minors or because they can’t use their accounts because of some of their own violations, etc., and some of them are improper reasons, so there is a possibility of violations of laws and regulations. If it is said that the renting account has also collected the corresponding rent, and as a result, the other person renting the account has done something illegal and illegal, then the original account owner must also bear certain responsibilities." Zhao Hu said.
Loopholes
Faces have replaced the business with a low tide, and there are black and gray products that no longer take orders
Under the regulatory storm, Zheng Yi (pseudonym), who has been engaged in the game number rental business for many years, told the Shell Finance reporter that business was not good.
"Every summer vacation is the busiest time for the business of buying and renting accounts. Take a game, for example, about V8 level, with about 100 skin accounts, you can rent 300 yuan a month, and V9 to V10 can rent 800 yuan a month. But now the anti-addiction measures are becoming more and more strict, which is a big blow to the source of customers.” Zheng Yi said, “With the launch of face recognition, many account owners’ accounts have triggered face verification. The information did not match, and some accounts were forced to prevent addiction. I have encountered many such disputes."
According to Qu Zilong, the current game rental platform accounts mainly come from four channels: individuals rent their own accounts, the rental platform owns a large number of accounts and then rent them, the data sources of account hacking existing in the market, and the cooperation with game manufacturers. account.
"The source of the account of the rental account platform is not necessarily the person who rents it. There are many problems in the gray industry in the industry. For example, the studio or the rental platform has registered a large number of accounts, and then find a way to pass the real-name authentication of the game platform to rent again, and professional The criminals who hacked the account, rented the stolen account through the account rental platform, and other issues. The batch registered account, where does the real-name authentication identity information come from, and is it compliant? All of these have involved violations of user privacy and crimes." Qu Zi Long told the Shell Finance reporter.
Before the facial recognition system was launched on the renting platform, Tencent was the first gaming company to test the waters of facial recognition verification.
There is a popular saying in the game industry, "There are only three game companies in China, one is Tencent Games, the other is NetEase Games, and the other is called Others."
According to Tencent's second-quarter financial report, game revenue increased by 12% to 43 billion yuan.
Throughout the first half of the year, game revenue reached 86.6 billion yuan.
On July 5, 2021, Tencent Health System officially launched the "Zero Cruise" function. Anyone who refuses or fails face verification will be considered as a minor, included in the anti-addiction supervision of Tencent Game Health System and kicked off the line.
However, face recognition is not a foolproof measure for a long time, and loopholes still exist.
At present, it is not difficult to find the business information of sellers who have sold facial-replacement software on the black-and-ash production platform.
On September 14, a reporter from Shell Finance and Economics searched on the black-and-white platform with related keywords and found that most of the sellers who had replaced the face business were sellers of "face recognition software".
When a reporter asked whether it was possible to pass the face verification process of the rental account platform, the seller said that as long as he found the avatar that authenticated himself, and then purchased the software, he could "self-authenticate" when the face verification pops up. The price is 1,299 yuan.
Another seller said that the face recognition software in his hand is divided into two grades, the normal version is 600 yuan, and the pass rate is 85%, while the advanced version is priced at 2,500 yuan. Believe in the game, not to mention."
It is worth mentioning that under the gradual increase in strict supervision, face recognition has greatly increased the cost of games for minors renting accounts, and the market is also quietly changing.
"If the real-name authentication system is a door, then the face recognition system is a wall. You can open the door with a key. You can open the door when facing a wall. Although you can turn it over once or twice, if you turn it over again and again, Overcoming the wall, the cost is too high." Zheng Yi decided not to accept the "cross-face" business in the game because the cost was too high and illegal.
At the end of August, a reporter from Shell Finance and Economics contacted a black-and-white person who was engaged in the business of "replacement of human faces". The other party said that WeChat users only need to pay 80 yuan (QQ users 120 yuan) to let "Liaozi" (that is, an unregistered adult). The user) binds his or her identity information to the game account, and then can pass the facial recognition verification.
This also makes game players the object of harvest.
Once the identity information of "Liaozi" is bound, the subsequent face recognition of the game account can only be verified by "Liaozi", and each service requires a charge.
The black-and-white person said that if the face verification pops up in the future, he will provide follow-up services at a price of 40 yuan.
On September 13, the Shell Finance reporter contacted the black and gray person again and found that the other party had deleted all information related to face verification on behalf of him. When the reporter asked if he could still do this business, the other party said that he would not accept any new information. customer.
Hidden worries
How to keep the bottom line of privacy when collecting minors’ facial information?
Regarding face recognition, Qu Zilong believes that the reliable solution to prevent minors from indulging in online games is to perform face recognition verification at the start of the game to verify whether the user’s face information and the real-name authentication information are the same person, and then correct The maximum number of accounts that can be logged in to a single mobile phone device is reasonably limited, which not only limits the accounts of the number rental platform, but also restricts the "professional power leveling".
However, according to the "Personal Information Protection Law" passed on August 20, biometrics and personal information of minors under the age of fourteen are listed as sensitive information that requires "separate consent". The game industry generally uses facial recognition. Will it bring hidden dangers to privacy protection?
Shell Finance reporters found in a test on September 13 that the rental account platform and the "mobile game registration device" must agree to their use of information and confirm authorization during the process of requesting face verification.
Among them, the rental account platform is connected to Baidu's face collection SDK, and the "Mobile Game Registration Device" also needs to agree to its "Personal Information Processing Authorization Letter" and confirm the authorization before it can continue to be used.
He Yanzhe, deputy director of the Network Security Center Evaluation Laboratory of China Electronics Standardization Research Institute, told Shell Finance reporters that manufacturers must strictly control the use of facial recognition to identify whether they are their own technologies, and even conduct certain tests on such technologies. The evaluation and filing guarantee ensure that the process will not excessively collect and retain the facial information of minors.
"If we exclude the idea that game manufacturers want to make money for minors, is there any better way to prevent minors from playing games? The best way is to stop the game directly. Of course this is unrealistic, so I hope that the public can put forward better opinions. The protection of minors is a very complex issue. It is necessary to let all the public understand the difficulty and where the contradictions are, and work together."
“Game assets themselves are our digital assets. Most banking apps use facial recognition to log in. We think it’s more secure than account passwords. Why wouldn’t games be? The core of the privacy issue lies in whether data is saved or not? Where will it be used? Whether it is used beyond the scope of authorization is privacy involved." Qu Zilong told reporters.
Li Yu (pseudonym), an employee of a head game company, told reporters that he supports the use of face recognition technology to prevent addiction, which is the only more effective way.
Speaking of some minors using adult identity information to bypass the anti-addiction system, he said that facial recognition cameras can solve some of the problems, but if you want to achieve better results, you still need the efforts of the whole society, for example, after verification To send text messages to parents’ mobile phones for verification, etc., this also requires the cooperation of multiple departments.
Bright Sword Minors addicted to games
●August 30
The National Press and Publication Administration issued the "Notice on Further Strict Management and Practically Preventing Minors from Indulging in Online Games", strictly limiting the time for providing online game services to minors.
After the notice was released, Tencent Games, Netease Games, Shengqu Games and other companies responded, saying that they would strictly abide by the requirements of the "Notice" and actively implement them.
●September 6
Tencent Games stated that account renting and selling seriously undermined the real-name system of games and the protection mechanism for minors. Up to now, Tencent has sued or sent letters to more than 20 account trading platforms and multiple e-commerce platforms requesting the suspension of related services.
●September 8
The relevant persons in charge of the Central Propaganda Department and the National Press and Publication Administration, together with the Central Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, etc., conducted interviews with key online game companies such as Tencent and NetEase, as well as game account rental and sales platforms, and game live broadcast platforms.
●September 8
Netease responded that it will carefully study and implement the spirit of the interview, strictly implement the relevant regulations and requirements of the regulatory authorities on the prevention of minors' addiction, further strengthen the review and management of game content, adhere to the correct value orientation, and introduce more innovations through continuous technological innovation. More well-made and well-thought-out original products will effectively guide the healthy games of minors and promote the continued improvement of the game ecology.
●September 14
Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department, Municipal Party Committee Cyberspace Affairs Office, Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and Municipal Administration of Communications and Administration and other departments collectively interviewed more than 20 key game companies, operating platforms, and publishing units in Shanghai, requiring key online game companies to fulfill their main responsibilities and strictly do a good job Content management, complete anti-addiction work without compromise.
Luo Yidan, Shell Financial Reporter, Beijing News