Trust of India reports:
Personal information of at least 388 Chinese HIV patients has been allegedly leaked in a fraud in which individuals had called them up posing as governmental officials, state-run media reported on Tuesday.
“A total of 388 persons have received scam calls in 31 provinces,” Bai Hua, the head of Baihualin National Alliance, a nongovernmental organisation that aims to provide assistance to people living with HIV, said.
[…]“Some HIV-positive persons told me that the scammers knew their names, addresses, the time when they were diagnosed, even the special disease control centre and the doctors who prescribed them medicines,” Bai said, adding the leak not only threatens patients’ personal lives, but also damages trust between health authorities and patients.
Read more on News18.
So is this an insider leak or something else? We really don’t know, but I found this sentence in the news report a bit puzzling:
The centre said it has alerted police and encrypted the information because it is illegal to disclose the personal information – including the names, addresses and names of family members – of people living with HIV without their permission.
So they first encrypted the information now? Is that what they’re saying?