Read the prompts
Behind a case of intentional homicide, it was implicated that APP operators used the Internet to infringe on citizens' personal information. Once you click on the "mysterious" link on your phone, regardless of whether you select "Agree to use current location", your real-time location will be instantly and accurately determined and transmitted to paying users. During the whole process, the APP did not set a privacy agreement, nor did it specify the purpose, method and scope of collecting and using personal information.
"The person in this news is a bit like me, you hurry up and open it and take a look!"
One day in June 2019, a girl who had been avoiding harassment by her ex-boyfriend suddenly received a news link from her ex-boyfriend, and she clicked on it casually, but she did not know that the location information had been leaked. The ex-boyfriend tracked him down, and the girl was tragically killed.
This is an intentional homicide case recently disclosed by the Gusu District People's Procuratorate of Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Who leaked the girl's address information and caused the tragedy? From 2019 to 2022, the Gusu District Procuratorate dug up cases of infringement of citizens' personal information in intentional homicide cases through case filing supervision, and brought the hidden accomplices to justice.
Who leaked her location information
In 2017, Shaanxi girls Jia Yun (pseudonym) and Liu Dong (pseudonym) fell in love. Due to Liu Dong's extreme personality and short temper, the two often quarrel. When Jia Yun discovered that Liu Dong also deliberately concealed his previous bad records such as intentional injury and robbery, he decided to end the relationship completely. In March 2019, at the age of 3, she proposed to break up. Liu Dong refused, and often bombarded Jia Yun with telephones, surrounded and blocked.
The overwhelmed Jia Yun came to Suzhou and falsely claimed to work in Hefei, but Liu Dong almost frantically inquired about her whereabouts.
"The person in this news is a bit like me, you hurry up and open it and take a look!" In June 2019, Jia Yun clicked on a news link from Liu Dong after receiving it. A week later, Jia Yun came home from work and was followed by Liu Dong, and the two had a fierce quarrel, and Liu Dong, who was out of control, picked up the scissors in the room and took the girl's life.
On the same day, Liu Dong turned himself in. In September 2019, the Gusu District Procuratorate arrested Liu Dong on suspicion of intentional homicide.
During the review of the case file, Hu Shuqiong, the prosecutor in charge, learned that Liu Dong had learned about an app that could locate the location information of others after payment, so he sent Jia Yun a news link in the app. After Jia Yun clicked on the link, the APP sent Liu Dong her location information - a community in Gusu District.
Hu Shuqiong realized that the information service of the app exceeded the normal scope, and its operators may be suspected of the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information.
Reconnaissance experiments lift the veil of information leakage
How does this app obtain other people's location information? Does its act of locating citizens' location information and providing it to others violate relevant national regulations?
In January 2020, the Gusu District Procuratorate entrusted Soochow University to provide technical analysis and consultation. It turned out that the operator of this APP registered a map developer account in his personal name and obtained the right to use the API (application programming interface) of the map. After the user pays the service fee, the operator embeds the map API into the news link by writing the web code. The user sends the link to the targetee, and once the latter opens the link, it can instantly locate its location and send the obtained location information to the user.
The Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that network operators must not leak, tamper with, or damage the personal information they collect; Personal information shall not be provided to others without the consent of the person being collected. According to the "Methods for Identifying the Illegal Collection and Use of Personal Information by Apps" jointly issued by relevant state departments in 2019, "without the consent of the user or anonymization, after the data is transmitted to the background server of the app, the personal information collected by the app is provided to a third party", which can be recognized as "providing personal information to others without consent".
Subsequently, according to the method confessed by Liu Dong, the procurator carried out several investigation experiments on the APP positioning service. The experiment found that after paying the service fee through the network, the user randomly selected a news link in the APP and sent it to the targeted, and after the targeted person clicked on the link, he would receive a prompt pop-up window of "whether to agree to use your current location".
After repeated operation verification, the prosecutor found that no matter whether the target clicked "yes" or "no", his real-time location would be accurately determined and transmitted to paying users through the app.
During the whole process, the APP not only did not set a privacy agreement, but also did not specify the purpose, method and scope of collecting and using personal information, nor did it inform the targeted person that its location information would be provided to others, which is obviously "providing personal information to others without the consent of the targeted person".
At this point, the prosecutor confirmed that the APP operator's sale of the obtained whereabouts information to users without the knowledge of the targeted person was an act of violating state regulations and suspected of infringing on citizens' personal information.
Promote the protection of citizens' personal information
According to the Criminal Law, one of the "particularly serious" circumstances of the crime of infringing on citizens' personal information is the serious consequences of causing the victim's death, serious injury, mental disorder, or kidnapping.
The procurator believes that it is precisely because this APP illegally obtains and leaks the victim's personal information, guides Liu Dong step by step to find the victim, resulting in the victim's killing, and his behavior has a criminal law causal relationship with the victim's death, which is one of the "particularly serious" circumstances, and should be criminally filed and investigated for criminal responsibility according to law.
In November 2021, the APP operators Zhao and Huang were arrested and brought to justice, and later transferred for review and prosecution.
After review, in early 2018, the defendant Zhao developed and compiled a program with the function of obtaining real-time positioning information of others by sending news links, and then cooperated with Huang to embed the program into the APP and open the paid use function. Between April 2018 and November 4, the app illegally provided or sold 2020,11 pieces of citizens' personal whereabouts and trajectory information, with illegal gains of 4572,83851 yuan.
In July 2022, Zhao and Huang were sentenced by the court to 7 years and 4 months in prison and 6 years and 4 months respectively, and were fined and confiscated illegal gains. Previously, Liu Dong, who killed Jia Yun, was sentenced to death by a court in October 9 with a two-year reprieve. None of the three appealed.
Under the background of big data, various APP, social networks, search engines and other services have developed rapidly, bringing great convenience to obtaining massive information, and also making citizens' personal information security face great challenges. Lawbreakers illegally obtain and sell citizens' personal information, sometimes seriously threatening the personal and property safety of the masses.
"We hope that by earnestly performing our legal supervision duties, we will sound the alarm for lawbreakers who use citizens' personal information for profit." Hu Shuqiong, the procurator handling the case, said that judicial organs have formed a joint force to combat and punish such illegal and criminal acts, and provide legal escort for personal information security; Network operators take advantage of technological advantages to take the initiative to assume social responsibility for the protection of personal information, and continuously improve the level of personal information protection; While enhancing their awareness of personal information protection, the public should also take this as a warning and refrain from selling or providing other people's personal information.
(Workers' Daily Wang Wei)