By Lee Hyo-sik
A progressive civic group is campaigning to force the government to change the resident registration numbers of all Koreans whose private information was leaked in the hacking of widely-used websites.
Jinbo Net said Tuesday that it has been collecting petitions from those who seek to have their resident registration numbers changed over growing concerns that their private information may be misused by identity thieves and others.
“We have been asking Internet users whose personal information has been leaked to join our cause. We will receive petitions and submit them to the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, demanding our registration numbers be changed in order to prevent them from being misused by criminals,” Jinbo Net activist Chang Yeo-kyung said.
She also said dozens of citizens filed a petition individually with the ministry, adding that the petitioners are willing to join the group’s planned legal action.
“We will definitely file a suit against the government if it refuses to accept our demands. We cannot just sit idle, and suffer financial and psychological damage as a result of the leak of our personal information,” Chang said.
She demanded the government stop private businesses both on- and offline from collecting resident registration numbers and other sensitive information from consumers, adding that local firms are not capable of protecting such data from hackers.
On July 28, SK Communications, the operator of Nate and Cyworld, announced that its network was hacked into by criminals who stole the private information of more than 35 million users in the country’s worst-ever security breach.
Nate, the third most-visited Web portal, has 33 million users, and Cyworld, the country’s most popular social networking site, has 25 million. The number of users for the two sites totals 35 million, not counting overlaps.
The company said user IDs, passwords, resident identification numbers, phone numbers, home addresses and other personal information stored on the two sites were leaked by hackers using an Internet protocol address based in China.
In February 2008, 10.81 million, or 60 percent of all registered users of the online open market site Auction, had their private information, including ID numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and even bank account numbers exposed by hackers presumed to be from China.