TechDirt: “A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about how an anonymous user had put up for sale the data of an estimated one billion Chinese citizens, probably obtained from the Shanghai police.  Back then, what exactly had happened was a little unclear — not least because the Chinese authorities were shutting down any discussion of the massive and embarrassing leak.  The Wall Street Journal has written a follow-up piece on the incident that clarifies the situation and puts things in a wider context (paywall alert):

The Wall Street Journal has since found dozens more Chinese databases offered for sale, and occasionally free, in online cybercrime forums and Telegram communities with thousands of subscribers. Four of the stolen caches contained data likely taken from government sources, according to a Journal review, while several others were advertised as containing government data.

Tens of thousands more databases in China remain exposed on the internet with no security, totaling over 700 terabytes of data, the largest volume of any country, according to LeakIX, a service which tracks such databases…”