China's Internet giant Baidu has vowed to crack down on the websites that offer search services for information on its cloud-storage platform, after some users complained that their privacy has been breached by Baidu's cloud-storage service.
"We will intensify the crackdown on the third-party search websites that could access the resources from Baidu Cloud," Baidu Cloud (pan.baidu.com) said on its official Sina Weibo account on Wednesday.
Baidu Cloud also called on its users to use the "private share" function, which requires a password to access the documents, instead of the "public share" function.
Users who opt for the "public share" function when uploading documents will be warned that their documents will appear on the home page of the users and could be viewed and downloaded by others, said Baidu Cloud.
Many users of Baidu Cloud expressed concerns online after finding that the information they stored on the website could be easily accessed by others. Their concerns grew after they learnt that the information they uploaded with the "public share" function could be accessed through many other search websites, which could "grab" contents from Baidu Cloud.
According to a Thursday report in the Beijing Youth Daily, huge amounts of personal information including mobile phone numbers uploaded by Baidu Cloud users, including car owners and governmental officials, could be searched through other websites.
According to a 2016 report on the cloud-storage market of China by Analysys.cn, a data research company, Baidu Cloud has gained more than 400 million users after it began to provide services in 2012, accounting for more than 73 percent of the market, chinanews.com reported in November 2016.
