The British government is investigating how health data volunteered to a charity for research purposes wound up for sale via three vendors on the Alibaba e-commerce site in China. One listing had 500,000 people’s data.A UK government minister told Parliament on Thursday that data from a health charity, UK Biobank, was briefly listed for sale by at least three vendors on the Chinese Alibaba e-commerce platform.
Ian Murray, the Labour MP for Edinburgh South and a minister of state at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, told Parliament that the charity first alerted the government to the issue on Monday.
He said that the data was no longer listed for sale and that no buyers were thought to have paid for access, thanking the Chinese government for the “speed and seriousness with which they worked with us to help remove these listings.”
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UK: Health data listed for sale on Alibaba in China
Mark Hallam with Reuters, AP, open source material
2 hours ago2 hours ago
The British government is investigating how health data volunteered to a charity for research purposes wound up for sale via three vendors on the Alibaba e-commerce site in China. One listing had 500,000 people’s data.
https://p.dw.com/p/5CiUK
A researcher handles samples in a cold room of the biobank of the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. May 5, 2015.
Biobanks, in this case in Paris, collect, collate, store and manage samples and health data en masse, making the anonymized data available to accredited researchersImage: Thomas Samson/AFP
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A UK government minister told Parliament on Thursday that data from a health charity, UK Biobank, was briefly listed for sale by at least three vendors on the Chinese Alibaba e-commerce platform.
Ian Murray, the Labour MP for Edinburgh South and a minister of state at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, told Parliament that the charity first alerted the government to the issue on Monday.
He said that the data was no longer listed for sale and that no buyers were thought to have paid for access, thanking the Chinese government for the “speed and seriousness with which they worked with us to help remove these listings.”
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What did the government say about the data being listed for sale on Alibaba?
Murray said that UK Biobank told the government of at least three listings appearing to sell data that volunteers had provided to the UK charity in a bid to improve research capabilities worldwide.
“At least one of these datasets appeared to contain data from all 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers,” Murray told the House.
“I want to reassure the House up front, however, that Biobank have advised that this data did not contain people’s names, addresses, contact details, or telephone numbers,” he said.
“The government has spoken to the vendor today, and they do not belive there were any purchases from the three listings before they were taken down. Once the government was aware of the situation, we took immediate action to protect participants’ data,” he said
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