Express delivery staff in China profit from selling client data

October 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Express delivery staff in China profit from selling client data

Staff Reporter

2013-10-16

Express delivery employees in China are profiting from the sale of records containing personal information online, with asking prices ranging between 0.40 yuan to 1 yuan (US$0.06- US$0.16), reports the Chinese-language Economic Information Daily. The business of selling express sheets has become a vast “gray area” for express delivery employees to earn money from an individual’s personal information. It is also becoming a platform for con artists to make false claims, burglarize homes or even commit murder, the paper said.The sales are conducted online, with the buyers spread across the country. Meanwhile, some related websites promise to satisfy specific demands made by their clients, such as providing designated delivery and receiving locations.

A reporter from the Economic Information Daily spent 0.5 yuan (US$0.08) to purchase an express sheet, containing information about a parcel sent from Chongqing to Beijing. The sheet also included the name, address and mobile phone number of the recipient. After checking with the recipient, a woman surnamed Wei, the reporter found that all of the information provided on the sheet was correct and that Wei was expecting an express delivery from Chongqing that day.

“It is terrible and makes me feel betrayed. It leaves me exposed without any sense of security,” Wei said.

The demand for express sheets has jumped in recent months, with telephone marketing companies paying large sums to receive the information. A marketing team from a kindergarten in Chongqing said that the institution is currently targeting high-end patrons and it often buys a number of express sheets, using the data to make phone calls to prospective customers.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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