[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
 
[2] On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a criminal gang organized all its "employees" for a team-building trip to an island. Who would have thought that the team-building would turn into a "team annihilation"...

 
 

Case review
[3] Recently, police officers from the Cybersecurity Detachment of the Nanjing Public Security Bureau stationed at the Jianye Branch discovered during their work that some online stores were renting out real-name authenticated online game accounts, and the business was booming, which caught their attention.

 
 

[4] The police investigated this and found that a company in Yangzhou operated four online stores, primarily renting out game accounts.
 
[5] For game players, logging into a gaming platform requires real-name verification, including entering a name and ID number, as well as a dynamic avatar verification. How could they pass the dynamic avatar verification without using the player's own identity information? The police stated that the criminal gang first purchased a large amount of citizens' personal information through illegal channels, then collected game accounts through irregular means, bound the accounts to the purchased information, used matching phones and software to create dynamic avatars, and then rented out the accounts. After game players purchased a certain duration of service from them, they could use the information provided by the criminal gang to successfully log into the gaming platform and pass the dynamic avatar verification.

 
 

[6] "The rental price is 5 to 10 yuan per hour, which doesn't seem like much, but with hundreds or thousands of accounts rented out 24 hours a day, the total adds up to a significant amount," the police said.
 
Based on the investigation, on September 16, Nanjing Jianye police deployed officers to Yangzhou to arrest the gang. To the officers' surprise, the company was clearly conducting "business" online, but no one was in the office.

 
 

Further investigation revealed that all employees of the company had gone to an island in Taihu Lake. The police tracked them down and eventually captured the entire criminal gang, who were on a team-building trip, at a homestay hotel on the island.
 
 
"Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China"
Article 253-1: [Crime of Infringing on Citizens' Personal Information]
Whoever, in violation of relevant state regulations, sells or provides citizens' personal information to others, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall also, or shall only, be fined; if the circumstances are especially serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than seven years, and shall also be fined.
Whoever, in violation of relevant state regulations, sells or provides citizens' personal information obtained during the performance of duties or provision of services to others shall be given a heavier punishment in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph.
 
Whoever steals or otherwise illegally obtains citizens' personal information shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the first paragraph.
 
Where a unit commits any of the crimes mentioned in the preceding three paragraphs, a fine shall be imposed on the unit, and the directly responsible person in charge and other directly responsible personnel shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the respective paragraphs.
 
 
Article 285, Paragraph 3
[Crime of Providing Programs and Tools for Intrusion or Illegal Control of Computer Information Systems] Whoever provides programs or tools specifically designed for intruding into or illegally controlling computer information systems, or knowingly provides programs or tools to others for committing illegal or criminal acts of intruding into or illegally controlling computer information systems, if the circumstances are serious, shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph.
 
 
 
[1] The author's perspective
It is understood that this company in Yangzhou had a very busy "business." Besides the boss and his wife, there were four or five technical staff and over a dozen customer service representatives. The technical staff were responsible for maintenance, while customer service handled order taking, account rentals, and follow-up services. Sometimes, when the company's own staff couldn't keep up, they would outsource the "business" of creating dynamic avatars online, such as posting tasks in certain chat groups for netizens willing to do such work to pick up.
 
Thus, this gang not only infringed on the personal information of other citizens but also disrupted the state's regulatory order for preventing minors from becoming addicted to online games. The state introduced regulations on preventing minors from online game addiction to protect their physical and mental health. By renting out such accounts, the gang effectively bypassed relevant regulatory oversight, harming minors' well-being, which is undoubtedly an illegal and criminal act.