Have you ever wondered how sometimes telemarketers, spammers, and hackers get ahold of your personal information? Sometimes these can come from hacks of customer databases, malware, or in the case of China, it seems that your personal data could have been sold by companies for profit.
In a report from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that over 20 people have been arrested for allegedly selling iPhone user data in an underground network. What makes this particularly scary is the fact that those who were arrested are Apple distributors, some of whom are from direct sales outlets in China and some of whom Apple outsources services to.
The report claims that the information sold included data such as user names, phone numbers, Apple IDs, and they were sold piecemeal between 10 to 80 yuan per data point, which doesn’t seem like a lot but apparently they managed to rack up a whopping 50 million yuan (around $7.36 billion) from their sales of the stolen data.
It is unclear as to how many people might have been affected by the sale of their personal data, and if it is just limited to customer information in China, or if those outside of China have been affected as well, but perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst idea to update your Apple account with a new password if it makes you feel safer.