The Shanghai Roadway Dun & Bradstreet Marketing Services Co. Ltd breach currently holds the unenviable distinction of being the largest recorded breach in DataLossDB’s database. In March 2012, we learned that law enforcement was investigating whether the company had illegally collected and sold 150,000,000 people’s information. Dun & Bradstreet responded by suspending its Chinese service and cooperating with law enforcement.
Now the Wall Street Journal reports that a Shanghai court fined Dun & Bradstreet’s Roadway unit $ 160,648 and also fined and sentenced four former employees to up to two years each in prison for illegally buying information on Chinese consumers. The employees were reportedly fined between 5,000 and 10,000 yuan (about $800 to $1,600).
So that’s it for the biggest privacy breach in terms of jail sentences and fines, but the incident may have an impact on D&B’s plans for their market in China, as WSJ explains.