Chinese police have busted a gang suspected of stealing more than 5 billion pieces of personal information, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced Tuesday.
Police officers from 14 provinces and municipalities including Beijing worked together and detained 96 members of a gang who stole and trafficked personal information online.
The gang were found to have hacked into servers of many companies since 2015. Massive leaks included user IDs, passwords and home addresses in clear text, according to the MPS.
They made profits mainly by selling the information via online forums and instant chat services, the MPS said.
Some of the suspects also committed bank card fraud by using duplicated cards with copied personal information.
