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An Anonymous Coward writes:

In a December 12 exposé occupying two full spreads in Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis Daily, reporters Rao Lidong (饶丽冬) and Li Ling (李玲) carefully documented their successful attempts to obtain personal information about consenting colleagues through "tracking" services advertised online.

For a modest fee of 700 yuan, or about 100 dollars, the reporters were able to obtain an astonishing array of information based on one colleague's personal ID number, including a full history of hotel rooms checked into, airline flights taken, internet cafes visited, border entries and exits, apartment rentals, real estate holdings — even deposit records from the country's four major banks.

But that wasn't all. The reporters were also able to purchase live location data on another colleague's mobile phone, pinpointing their position with disturbing accuracy.

Hundreds of tracking services are advertised on internet-based platforms in China, offering clients the power to unlock, with as little as a phone number or ID, the personal data of just about any Chinese citizen. You can find them on Tencent's WeChat and QQ services, on the Taobao online marketplace and on Weibo. And while some of these services are unreliable or outright fraudulent, others are able to deliver accurate information from what must be national police and government databases, as well as from banks and mobile carriers.

In other words, through a simple mobile transaction, you, too, can be Big Brother.

Original Submission