Following a surge in phishing scams, the Ministry of Digital Affairs on Tuesday fined online marketplace Shopee and local bookstore Eslite for failing to protect customer data.
Singapore-based Shopee and Eslite Spectrum Co were fined NT$200,000 and NT$100,000 respectively for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法), the ministry said in a statement.
Shopee, which the Criminal Investigation Bureau in March said was the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform on which people were most likely to be exposed to phishing scams, failed to take concrete action to address the threats it faced, the ministry said.
Photo: Hsu Tzu-ling, Taipei Times
When Shopee was asked for information, it only provided a limited amount of data about customer safety, the ministry said, adding that it failed to prove it had taken the necessary measures to protect customer data.
Shopee also failed to effectively supervise partners it outsources to, which contributed to the leak, the ministry said.
Reports to the 165 anti-fraud hotline led to the discovery of the phishing attacks on C2C platforms, it said.
The hackers’ goal is to steal personal or business information used by customers to carry out online transactions and use it to scam people, it said.
Eslite was found to have poor account management during an on-site inspection, the ministry said.
The bookstore came under fire last month after a customer’s private data were allegedly leaked to a supposed Chinese agent.
NGO worker Cynthia Yang (楊欣慈) received a telephone call in February from someone claiming to be a Taiwanese pollster who asked questions about a book titled If China Attacks (阿共打來怎麼辦), which Yang had purchased from Eslite’s online bookstore.
However, the caller’s accent and terminology suggested they were not Taiwanese, said Yang, who is deputy executive secretary of the Here I Stand Project, a Taiwanese non-profit organization that seeks to promote the nation’s youth internationally.
The caller also kept emphasizing how “sensitive” the book’s contents were and insisted that “a military unification [of Taiwan and China] was inevitable,” Yang told a news conference held by her organization and the Taiwan Statebuilding Party on May 14.
The ministry said that it would continue to monitor the companies and other e-commerce firms.
Shopee and Eslite need to make improvements soon to avoid more fines, it added.
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