By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

With the advent of Internet, people have enjoyed unprecedented convenient access to any kind of information in the world with a few mouse clicks and keyboard tapping. But some surfers' malicious use combined with cursory management practices of Web site runners is overshadowing the benefits.

Of many foreseeable side effects, ``private information leakage'' is the most worrisome since it can inflict significant damage on innocent Internet users.

But neither the government nor Internet-based firms have paid much attention to private information security.

Rep. Park Dae-hee of the governing Grand National Party disclosed Tuesday unauthorized officials at public firms had searched and even leaked sensitive private information on numerous citizens.

He said officials at the National Health Insurance Corp. had inspected more than 12,000 citizens' private information such as home address, annual income and health conditions between 2002 and May this year, adding such illegalities have been rampant at the National Pension Service as well. The lawmaker presumes roughly data on 1,855 people have been leaked.

Among the victims are famous entertainers and politicians including Bae Yong-joon, Kim Tae-hee and even President Lee Myung-bak.

Males searched the data to check whether their girl friends had an abortion. Employees collected home addresses to dole out wedding invitation cards. Some workers sold a pile of such information to private financial companies.

The public health agency has reprimanded 77 employees for information leakage.

``The officials in question said they did not consider the searches a serious crime. They appeared to have no remorse for what they did,'' Park said. ``The more serious problem is nobody monitored their illegal data retrieval.''

Jeollabukdo Office of Education said Wednesday personal information on 40,000 teachers in the province had been leaked over the past six months through its Web site due to technical flaws. The office immediately shut down the homepage. According to the office, the exposed data included names, social security numbers and working conditions.

Private companies were no exception.

More than 1,300 subscribers to the nation's third largest mobile phone service provider LG Telecom fell victim to a leak Wednesday. Names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of subscribers could be seen on its Web site (LGµ¥ÀÌÄÞ - myLG070), the company said.

Public Offices Vulnerable to Leakage

A recent Korea Information Security Agency (KISA) report showed that of 700 public offices' Web sites, 54.1 percent or 379 were highly vulnerable to leaks. The report stated KISA collected more than 67,000 social security numbers through the Internet homepages.

``We confirmed about 6,490 cases of highly sensitive personal data in circulation on portal sites. They include financial transactions and medical checkups as well as manpower assessment reports,'' KISA said. ``Web site managers at public institutions have little idea of the importance of cyber security. Some institutes posted articles with social security numbers and other personal data included.''

The government said it would update regulations to prevent private information leakage on public institutes' Web sites. It also plans to spend $700 million to install anti-hacking tools on them.

A new law will mandate every public and private organization handling private information to encode subscribers' information such as bank accounts, social security numbers, IDs and passwords. Once a leak occurs, they will have to announce it immediately.

In addition, the prosecution has launched a team specialized in tracking information leaks.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr