China hauls in Alibaba execs over data heist; Amazon offers to settle with EU

Alibaba shares sank on Friday after a report said the tech giant's executives had been called in for meetings with Chinese officials over the theft of a vast police database.

A hacker last month put on sale what they claimed was the personal information of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens -- which, if true, would make it one of the biggest data heists in history.

Cybersecurity analysts subsequently confirmed that the data -- partly verified by AFP -- was stored on Alibaba's cloud servers, apparently by the Shanghai police.

The company's shares slumped 5.7 percent at the open in Hong Kong on Friday, hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that Shanghai authorities had called in its executives for talks in connection with the heist.

The Journal cited unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying the executives included Alibaba Cloud vice president Chen Xuesong, who heads the unit's digital public security work.

The report added that senior managers from Alibaba and its cloud unit held a virtual meeting on July 1 after a seller advertised the stolen database in a cybercrime forum.

As part of an internal investigation, company engineers have cut access to the breached database and have started reviewing related code, the Journal said, citing employees familiar with Alibaba's response to the hack.

The database is believed to have been stored on Alibaba's servers using outdated and insecure technology.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to an AFP request to confirm the information in the report.

China maintains a sprawling nationwide surveillance network that collects huge amounts of data from its citizens, ostensibly for security purposes.

Beijing has passed stronger data protection laws in recent years as public awareness of data security and privacy issues has grown.

There are few ways, however, for ordinary citizens to stop the government from gathering information on them.

The sample of 750,000 entries posted online by the hacker showed citizens' names, mobile phone numbers, national ID numbers, addresses, dates of birth and the police reports they had filed.

The hacker wanted 10 bitcoin -- around $200,000 at the time -- for the entire database.

Some of the information appeared to have been drawn from express delivery services, while other data included summaries of police incident reports in Shanghai over more than a decade until 2019.

At least four people out of more than a dozen contacted by AFP last week confirmed their details were listed in the database.

Amazon offers to settle EU antitrust cases over rival data
Brussels (AFP) July 14, 2022 - Amazon has offered a settlement against EU charges that the online giant undermined rivals by misusing the sensitive information of independent sellers to benefit its own retail business, the EU said Thursday.

The offer by Amazon is a huge step by the US-based behemoth that has denied for years accusations by rivals and regulators that it unfairly uses the troves of data parked on its platform to benefit its own products and services.

In its offer, the US tech giant commits to stop using non-public data such as sales performance and revenue that are "relating to or derived from the activities of independent sellers on its marketplace," an EU statement said.

Amazon also made an offer to end a second EU investigation on whether its hugely popular Prime service unfairly pushes buyers towards sellers using Amazon's logistics service.

This probe also looked into the Buy Box in which a user can swiftly make a purchase, skipping through the inconvenience of several screens and choices.

The company said it would display an alternative offer in the Buy Box feature if there is a substantial difference in price or delivery from the first one.

Amazon said while "we... disagree with several conclusions the European Commission made, we have engaged constructively with the Commission to address their concerns."

This will "preserve our ability to serve European customers and the more than 185,000 European small and medium-sized businesses selling through our stores".

- 'Win-win' -

The EU said it was asking rivals for feedback on Amazon's concessions by September 9 and, if approved, they would remain in place for five years under close monitoring by Brussels.

Many of these accusations towards Amazon are being answered separately in the EU's landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), a major EU legislation set to come into force next year.

The DMA imposes a long list of do's and don'ts on tech giant gatekeepers, including how they handle the sensitive data of competitors who use their platforms.

Alfonso Lamadrid, a competition lawyer at Garrigues in Brussels said the settlement offer was "a win-win" for both the Commission and Amazon.

On the one hand, it kept the commission from potentially fighting a long battle in court, and "at the same time the commitments essentially anticipate what Amazon would have needed to do to comply with the upcoming DMA," he said.

Amazon had previously settled a case with the EU commission over e-books and still faces scrutiny with national regulators in Germany, as well as non-EU Britain.

The commission said the settlement would not apply in Italy, where Amazon paid a huge fine and changed its business practices over similar concerns.

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Amazon moves to end EU antitrust probe over rival data
Brussels (AFP) July 14, 2022
Amazon has made commitments to answer charges by the EU's competition authority that the online giant used sensitive information of rivals to benefit its own retail business, the EU said Thursday. The offer by Amazon is a huge step by the US-based behemoth that has faced years of accusations by rivals and regulators that it unfairly uses the troves of data parked on its platform to launch its own products and services. The US tech giant "commits to refrain from using non-public data relating to, ... read more