A real estate salesman in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, was accused of fraudulently obtaining customers' business card information by pretending to be an employee of a company that operates a business card management service and sending a fake email asking for login information to companies using the service. A company employee was arrested. In response to the investigation, he has denied the charges.
The person arrested was Kazuma Kataoka (37), the deputy manager of GRANDCITY, a real estate sales company located in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, in November last year, a fake email was sent to an air conditioning company in Tokyo pretending to be an employee of Sansan, a company that operates a business card management service. He is suspected of violating the Unauthorized Computer Access Act for obtaining business card information.
The fake email pretended to be a procedure necessary to continue using the service, asking users to reply with the information needed to log in.
It is believed that the deputy manager instructed his subordinates to send fake emails and obtain business card information, and used the obtained information for sales purposes.
It is believed that he may have used the same technique to illegally access the information of more than a dozen companies and obtained information on more than 4 million business cards.
In response to the investigation, he denied the charges, saying, ``I did not give any instructions.''
The Metropolitan Police Department and operating companies are urging caution when using business card management services, including limiting the devices that can access information and implementing biometric authentication.