YTO Express, one of China's largest express delivery companies, has been unable to stop employees from selling customer information to online dealers, despite its ongoing efforts to stamp out the practice, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
The company's admission illustrates the difficulty that the express delivery industry has had protecting customers' personal information, including names, addresses and telephone numbers, as online dealers continue to proliferate. A search of taobao.com turned up 3,000 results for personal information dealers.
Some buyers use the information to conduct scams or send out junk e-mail, said Wu Ji, a lawyer from Shanghai Hengye Law Firm.
"I cannot think of any way to completely protect my personal information because I have to give it out to collect my package," said a local resident surnamed Chen. "I hope taobao.com and authorities do something about this problem."
YTO has admitted that some of its employees illicitly deal in the personal information of its customers, said a company press officer surnamed Zhou. Last year, the company started working with taobao.com to solve the problem, but the effort hasn't stopped the practice.
The company has rooted out employees who release customer information, and has punished some of them, Zhou told the Global Times. Sometimes, it asks police to step in, but employees often go unpunished.
The company acknowledged its difficulties in response to an exposé published Tuesday in the Shanghai Morning Post. The company has an information network that allows employees to obtain updated information about customers from across the country.
Online information dealers can get a hold of a YTO customer's personal information within minutes after he or she sends out a package, according to the report.
The dealers are even able to provide their buyers with information about customers who send packages between specific places. The online dealers also sell information about the customers of other express delivery companies, such as TTK, ZTO and Yunda Express, according to online information dealers contacted by the Global Times.
Generally, the dealers sell each piece of information for 1 yuan ($0.16), though many dealers offer discounts for bulk purchases.
One information dealer, who runs an online store on taobao.com, said she gets her information from a friend who works for YTO, according to the report. The dealer's friend runs a website that specializes in the personal information of YTO's customers. The website continuously updates its database. On October 16, the website added 200,000 or so pieces of new information from 9 am to 6 pm.
The illegal sale of personal information carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison, Wu said. However, suspects are seldom charged with the crime because of the difficulty of tracking the sales.
The Shanghai Municipal Postal Administration, which supervises express delivery companies in the city, refused to comment on the issue.
Taobao.com plans to continue investigating the issue and will ask police to step in if necessary, said Zhou Yulei, a company press officer.
Lin Yi contributed to this story