Mystery Chinese database lists ‘BreedReady’ status of 1.8 million women, along with phone numbers, addresses and Facebook profiles
- Insecure cache was discovered by Dutch internet expert Victor Gevers, who earlier identified surveillance database tracking 2.5 million residents in Xinjiang
- Other information recorded includes age, education, marital status, and a field labelled ‘political’
An open database in China contains the personal information of more than 1.8 million women, including their phone numbers, addresses, and something called “BreedReady” status, according to a researcher.
Victor Gevers, a Dutch internet expert from the non-profit group GDI Foundation, found the insecure data cache while searching for open databases in China. He posted a series of screenshots of it over the weekend.
The database, whose server is in China, included fields labelled in English for sex, age, education, marital status, as well as a column titled “BreedReady”, which could be a poor translation of Chinese terms to describe whether a woman has children or is of child-bearing age, observers noted. It was taken down late on Monday afternoon local time, according to Gevers.
The data breach is alarming in the context of official concerns over China’s falling birth rates. Women rights advocates and critics of China’s use of strict family planning rules worry about how far the government will go to encourage more women to have children.
It is not clear whether the database is related to a dating app, a government registry, or another organisation or company. Gevers, who also identified a database maintained by a surveillance company tracking at least 2.5 million residents in Xinjiang, said he was still taking samples and working on verifying the data.