Two men were apprehended and questioned by prosecutors on Thursday, suspected of selling personal information on students and parents, allegedly obtained in collusion with school officials.
Officials at Taipei’s Shihlin District Prosecutors’ Office said after questioning the 49-year-old man surnamed Chiu (邱) that he admitted to paying NT$500,000 for information about 160,000 individuals, containing the names of students, their ages, the names of their parents, their home addresses, what school they attend and other personal information.
Chiu was quoted as saying that he sells the information to private tutoring centers and cram schools and they use the information to mail advertising leaflets, or make cold-call phone sales.
Chiu was allegedly in possession of databases for the entire student populations of some cities and counties, and was said to have received sums of up to NT$300,000 for the sale of such information.
Prosecutors said they had also taken in another man surnamed Yu (游), who was allegedly Chiu’s delivery man.
Yu was released after posting bail of NT$30,000, while Chiu remains in custody.
In the raid on Chiu’s house earlier this week, officials found the database containing the personal information of 160,000 students and their parents on three computers and disks.
Chiu has not divulged how the records were obtained, but it is suspected he paid school officials for access to student files, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Chiu and Yu were in violation of the Personal Information Protection Act (個人資料保護法), which carries a maximum penalty of a five-year jail term and a fine of NT$1 million (US$32,190), adding that cram schools and private tutoring businesses who purchased the data were also in violation of the act.
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