May 6, Cybernews Research Group found a colossal data set containing personal information of exclusively Chinese citizens.
The amount of data has already exceeded 1.2 billion records and continues to grow. The first entry to this archive was added on April 29, and in just a week the amount of data increased to 1,230,703,487 records. The leak takes about 100 gigabytes and contains mainly phone numbers, but often other sensitive data, such as home addresses and personal certificates.
Most of the data is collected from previously long public databases, but there are also unique and previously not visible data sets. Researchers suggest that there is a certain organized group with potentially unkind intentions behind the collection of data.
What is included in the leak?
- 668,304,162 records including QQ accounts and telephone numbers. QQ is an extremely popular application for social networks in China, similar to WhatsApp.
- 502,852,106 records containing Weibo accounts and phone numbers. Weibo is a Chinese microblog platform similar to the hybrid Twitter and Facebook.
- 50,557,417 records from the SHUNFENG database, which includes phone numbers, names, and addresses. Shunfeng provides logistics/courier services in China.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.