Shanghai hack will set back China's digitisation
Emerald expert briefings · 2022
Significance The data purportedly come from the Shanghai police force. They include names, addresses, places of birth, telephone numbers, national ID numbers and police records. Some records go back as far back as 1995. The data was offered for sale for 10 bitcoins (USD197,000). Impacts Aliyun, the cloud provider hosting the data, will probably be scapegoated, which will make other companies warier of government contracts. Regulators may tighten regulation of cloud services, raising costs for both them and their users. The duration for which government bodies store information may be rethought; retaining data longer than necessary has become a liability. The people whose data has been leaked risk identity theft and potentially blackmail, but are unlikely to receive compensation.