SHENZHEN police launched a citywide operation Thursday to crack down on illegal practices involving telecom scams and malicious telemarketing by using personal information acquired through illegal means, the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

Police have taken criminal compulsory measures on nine suspects for infringing on citizens’ personal information and 28 suspects for committing fraud during the operation. Currently, 26 of them are being held under criminal detention and 11 have been released on bail pending trial. Another 32 people are being held under administrative detention.

After searching the 30 locations where the suspects were staying, the police ferreted out over 1 million pieces of residents’ personal information.

One of the locations was an information consulting company in Meilin, where police seized 420,000 pieces of residents’ personal information that had been acquired from illegal sources. Each of the company’s employees would make 300 to 400 crank calls each day using the information.

Another company in Longgang District bought personal information of 170,000 stock investors online and reached out to these people for fraud. The company’s employees defrauded their victims by persuading them to invest in gold on a fake investment platform, according to the report.

Wang Zhengtu, a crime investigation police officer with the city’s public security bureau, said that some people had acquired residents’ personal information by using computer viruses or hacker attacks, while some information was leaked by insiders at companies or institutions. Additionally, netizens tend to leave a lot of personal information online and some people obtain that information by using big-data analysis.

People who sell or provide citizens’ personal information to others will face a jail term of up to three years, while severe violators will be sentenced to prison for up to seven years. (Zhang Yang)