- Author | Di Lin
- Source｜Tencent
- Release time｜2021-03-21
In the era of information explosion, privacy leakage is a problem that has received widespread attention but has been repeatedly banned. This kind of problem does not only occur in China, it is also common in other countries such as Japan.
On March 18, the Global Times reported that LINE, one of Japan's most popular instant messaging software, had leaked user data. Japanese consumers and the media are paying close attention to this matter.
After all, this instant messaging software LINE has been popular in Japan and Taiwan for a long time.
Public information shows that the most commonly used chat software for consumers in Japan and Taiwan is LINE. Currently, LINE has more than 400 million registered users worldwide and 160 million active users.
It can be said that the status of LINE in Japan and Taiwan is equivalent to that of WeChat or QQ in Mainland China. Therefore, the leak of personal information of LINE users caused an uproar in the industry.
When the Japanese media reported the incident, they dumped the pot to the Chinese company. It is reported that Japanese media claim that Chinese companies can obtain personal information of LINE users.
The reason why it was able to dump the pot to a Chinese company, according to the information disclosed by the Japanese "Asahi Shimbun", is because LINE outsourced the development of artificial intelligence and system operation to a Chinese company in Shanghai.
The four employees of this Chinese company were able to access personal information such as the names and phone numbers of LINE users during the development of LINE.
Indeed, as a software development side, there is a suspicion of leaking user privacy. However, according to LINE's investigation, although the four Chinese employees have accessed user information at least 32 times, they have no inappropriate access records.
Interestingly, after the failure to dump China, the Japanese media targeted LINE Korea branch. Therefore, all data on the LINE platform are stored on servers in South Korea.
What's more worth mentioning is that LINE itself is a software launched by the Japanese subsidiary of South Korean Internet Group NHN. This time the Japanese media dumped the pot to South Korea, where the parent company is located, which is really unexpected.
Although LINE’s suspicion is well-founded, it has failed to throw the pot twice.
This makes people suspect that the leak of user personal information is LINE's self-direction and performance. After all, this company had a huge loss of $160 million in the second quarter of 2019.
However, LINE is one of the top players in the cute emoji IP economy, and it can earn 1.2 billion a year by relying on the Internet celebrity emoji package IP.
Then, which part of the user's personal information leaked this time, I am afraid that only LINE and related stakeholders know.
The problem of information leakage needs to be solved, but the habit of throwing the pot is not. I hope LINE can find out the truth as soon as possible.
