Strict Rules, Stern Punishment Stem Recurrences

Users of the Internet and mobile phones have long wondered where spam mail comes from.

They must have been stunned to find out the nation's second-largest telephone and broadband provider sold the personal information of 6 million customers to 1,000 telemarketing firms.

What is even more surprising is that Hanarotelecom was not the only company to have done so, and identity theft is now a kind of ``open secret'' within the industry.

Most astonishing of all, the company was disciplined for similar violations last August but has kept leaking the personal data of customers, even establishing a sister telemarketing firm to capitalize on this new line of business. We can't help being dumbfounded with their boldness.

The violations came on the heels of the nation's largest hacking incident, in which Internet Auction, the biggest online shopping mall, was found to have mistakenly leaked the data of almost 11 million customers.

All this indicates how lax the nation's laws and regulations are on cyber privacy and how fatally generous society is with identify thieves and fraudsters.

The government should waste no more time and toughen related rules and disciplines.

It should stop these information peddlers ― cyber marketers, credit card firms and mobile providers ― from demanding personal information beyond their justifiable needs from customers.

Most Korean Internet businesses want not just names and email addresses of potential customers, as their foreign counterparts do, but also clients' home phone numbers, marriage status and even hobbies and financial situation. These are blatant infringements of privacy under the false pretext of business and should be stopped right away.

The government should also enhance rules related with residential registration numbers by focusing on not only their illegal leakage but also their misuse. It ought also to consider doing away with the system itself, which is unheard of in other countries and often used as a key for ``merging'' personal data by identity thieves. It can instead reinforce the use of the so-called I-PIN, or Internet-only personal identification number, to replace the time-old number vulnerable to intentional abuse.

Last but not least, it should drastically toughen penalties, in terms of both penal and financial terms, to nip would-be violators in the bud.

Consumers are right in seeking a class action against Hanarotelecom, and are advised to hold massive boycotts and withdraw their membership.

Without the eradication of these new criminals, Korea's blown-up reputation as the world's IT superpower will look empty.