In what is likely one of the largest data breaches in history, the Shanghai police database incident could expose data from one billion Chinese citizens. This includes sensitive data like birthplaces, phone numbers, national identification numbers and crime details. Some have questioned the scope of the breach, but at least parts of it have been verified. And all this came to light only after a hacker offered to sell the data that was allegedly left unsecured and accessible for more than a year.
This breach is comparable to about 236 million people being impacted in the United States. Given China’s quest to gather vast amounts of data on both its own citizens and Americans, it is not outside the realm of possibility that American data could be at risk; indeed, U.S. TikTok user data has reportedly been accessed in China. To make matters worse, China is apparently bad at keeping collected information secure and unavailable to the rest of the world. There are three main takeaways the United States and its citizens can rely on to help prevent and defend against similar breaches.
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