Snooping, sharing and shifting

Many offices around the world sent their employees an urgent message on 6 June: ‘Please change your LinkedIn password immediately’, as the news spread that millions of accounts of the professional networking website had been hacked. 

Nearly 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords ended up in the wrong hands and were posted on an online forum by cybercriminals. And it was not only LinkedIn that was a victim of a the latest data security breach; the online dating website eHarmoney also admitted that nearly 1.5 million of its passwords had been stolen and music website Last.fm also suffered a major password leak. 

Although the three companies invalidated the embezzled passwords and they were quick to send out instructions to their affected customers telling them how to reset their accounts, the damage had been done. Analysts say it is not unlikely that criminals have scrutinised and copied millions of accounts and will try the same passwords – in combination with the corresponding usernames, usually email addresses – on other popular websites, such as Gmail, Hotmail, Twitter and Facebook. After all, many people use the same email address and password for a range of websites.

Who is snooping?

Obviously, it was not LinkedIn’s best month since the company launched 10 years ago. And the password leak sent shudders through the industry: if this can happen to such a big and popular website, who says it won’t happen to smaller, less well-protected players?

Experts, meanwhile, are convinced the internet is increasingly becoming a dangerous data jungle. Data is being copied, transmitted and passed on to advertisers, credit card details are being sold, twitter, hotmail and gmail accounts used to send round viruses and spam, while login details are publicly available online. 

Without trying to scare away the average internet user, many fraud experts do admit protecting your login details and other sensitive data has become more difficult than ever before in the history of the internet. The number of cyberattacks, tens of thousands each single day, are quickly increasing and, worryingly, consumers are mostly not even aware an attack has taken place or data has been stolen or shared without their consent. Mass hackings like the users of LinkedIn and eHarmony experienced at the beginning of June are rare and do make headlines, but many industry experts warn about all those smaller attacks you never hear about. Who is snooping, sharing and shifting is increasingly becoming one big blur. Keeping the same password for months on end has become a convenience one cannot longer afford.

 

Michiel Willems © 2012 CP Publishing Ltd. Picture: IBNLive.in.com / Original Artist 

China in need of new laws as “monitoring the internet is very difficult”

SHANGHAI - The complex legal framework that regulates e-commerce activities in China will not be updated “for another five years”, according to Lin Junqiang, Deputy Director of the Information Centre at the Industry and Commerce Ministry in Beijing, who spoke exclusively to Michiel Willems in Shanghai. 

Junqiang said “it will take time” before China will have agreed on new legislation. Although the Chinese Government is planning to “bring in a new law, as there is currently no [central] law”. Junqiang stressed “this will take time” and any new “legislation will not be ready another five years”.

Currently, a range of decrees, central government regulations and provincial frameworks regulate issues such as domain names, data protection, consumer rights, electronic signatures, telecommunications, online content, e-contracts, IT security, internet access and copyrights. As the Chinese market is expanding rapidly, a growing number of businesses, consumers and investors are demanding an update and simplification of the country’s complex regulatory framework.

Junqiang said a new law is needed because “China is facing a range of challenges. The current regulations can not keep up with the rapidly evolving technology. Chinese businesses see a rise in law suits and there are more and more user complaints.”

Therefore, China has started “looking at other regulatory systems around the world to learn”. In the last twelve months Junqiang and a delegation of government officials have visited Japan, Germany, the UK and the US to research the  approach to e-commerce regulation. “We noticed a lot of differences”, said Junqiang. “The US has a much more general framework than Japan or Korea, Japan is very detailed.” China will opt for “a more detailed framework, based on the Japanese model but then with a Chinese approach”, Junqiang said, adding that this is necessary because “monitoring the internet in China is very difficult”. 

Junqiang stressed that “internet service providers have a duty to assist the Government.” Service providers in China “have to close websites if the Govermnent asks them to, but providers alone cannot do the job as it is very difficult to monitor the whole online space.”
Junqiang said that, until the new law is ready, “the [current] regulations can continue to control the situation”.

Michiel Willems © June 2012 CP Publishing Ltd. Picture: Chinese-flag.org