LONDON, April 23 (Reuters) – Britain is investigating
how data from a health charity came to be advertised for sale on
China’s Alibaba, a government minister said on
Thursday, including one dataset that appeared to contain
information from 500,000 people.
Science minister Ian Murray told lawmakers that the charity,
UK Biobank, had informed the government on Monday that its data
appeared to have been advertised for sale in three different
listings by several sellers in China on Alibaba’s e-commerce
platforms.
UK Biobank, a health research charity that provides
anonymised data to accredited researchers, said the data from
its 500,000 volunteers did not include their names, addresses,
contact details or telephone numbers, Murray said.
“The government has spoken to the vendor today and they do
not believe that there were any purchases from the three
listings before they were taken down,” Murray said.
He added that the government had worked with UK Biobank, the
Chinese government and the vendor to have the listings removed,
and that the charity had revoked access to three research
institutions identified as the source of the data.
Murray said that UK Biobank had referred itself to the
Information Commissioner’s Office. The charity did not
immediately responded to a request for comment on the breach.
A spokesperson for the ICO said: “People’s medical data is
highly sensitive information, not only do people expect it to be
handled carefully and securely, organisations also have a
responsibility under the law.
“UK Biobank has made us aware of an incident and we are
making enquiries.”
Access to the charity’s data had also been paused while
technical measures were put in place to prevent bulk downloads,
Murray said, confirming that the suspension had already been in
effect.
Murray described the incident as an unacceptable abuse of UK
Biobank’s data, and said the government took the matter
“extremely seriously.”
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; editing by Sarah Young)