Many operators have been arrested! Please stay away from these common illegal operations.

Starting from the second half of 2020, the national powerful departments began to implement nationwide concentrated law enforcement activities to help block telecommunications fraud, online gambling, online money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities, referred to as the "Card Cutting" operation, with the goal of cracking down on illegal activities such as the illegal opening and selling of phone cards and bank cards, and resolutely eradicating the breeding ground for such illegal and criminal activities. The "Card Cutting" operation targets everyone in the "two cards" (phone cards, bank cards) buying and selling chain, including communications and banking practitioners, with a focus on strengthening source control. Illegal opening and selling of phone cards is an illegal act that operators, especially sales staff, channel personnel and account managers, are particularly prone to. In fact, in addition to these illegal acts, operators should also pay attention to effective prevention.

1. The "Card Cutting" Operation Has Arrested Many Grassroots Employees of Operators

According to media reports, police in many places have proactively cracked down on a number of illegal phone card and bank card sales, arrested a number of suspects including operator employees, and confiscated a large number of phone cards, bank cards, mobile phones and other criminal tools involved in the case. Police investigations have found that criminals illegally opened a large number of mobile phone cards by luring and corrupting internal personnel of telecommunications operators, and then quickly sold them to overseas fraud gangs in a short period of time.

According to a report from CCTV, the first round of "card-cutting" operations has captured more than 4,600 suspects; in the second round of "card-cutting" operations, 405 suspects were captured and more than 43,000 phone cards and bank cards were seized. The media report specifically disclosed that the suspects captured included several employees of the operator's Beijing branch.

According to the latest media reports, as of January 15, 2021, a total of 7,816 criminal gangs involving "two cards" have been eliminated nationwide, 148,000 suspects of "two cards" have been arrested, more than 57,000 suspects of "two cards" have been publicly punished, and a total of 8,869 industry outlets and institutions have been regulated, and the crackdown and governance work has achieved significant phased results. You can imagine how many operators are behind these figures.

Under the strong pressure of KPI assessment, grassroots employees of operators, especially salesmen, channel staff and customer managers who are under pressure to sell cards, naturally relaxed the real-name requirement for applying for phone cards in order to complete their assessment tasks. This has to some extent condoned the buying and selling of non-real-name phone cards (commonly known as "black cards"), consciously or unconsciously violating the rigid provisions of the law.

Before committing a crime, no matter whether the perpetrator is fully aware of the wrongdoing, he or she will eventually be subject to legal sanctions. Although many grassroots employees of operators do not have the direct intention to sell phone cards, they relax the regulatory requirements clearly stipulated by the law in the performance of their duties, which is illegal in itself. Therefore, I advise everyone to pay attention to effectively avoid illegal operations even if the assessment pressure is great.

2. Infringement of citizens’ personal information is very likely to occur in marketing activities

Operators have all the information about users' consumption behaviors, and under the mandatory real-name system, this includes sensitive personal information such as user ID information and detailed home address information. Although operators have various regulations that clearly restrict violations of the requirements for querying users' personal information, this rigid requirement seems insignificant in front of the marketing activities organized by the unit.

Multiple public cases on the China Judgments Online website have fully demonstrated that in order to carry out marketing activities, operators' employees searched for user information in the business system and provided this information to third-party agents, who then carried out promotional activities through telephone marketing and door-to-door marketing. When third parties used this user information, they lacked a sense of confidentiality, resulting in the leakage of a large amount of user information.

The above cases only describe the suspected violation of citizens' personal information caused by the work behavior of operator employees. In fact, there are many other public cases pointing to the collusion between operator employees and outside criminals, who queried user information in the business system after receiving benefits. Although this typical operation of eating from the inside and climbing from the outside was more common in the past few years, this behavior has not been cut off to this day.

Violation of citizens' personal information is a crime that is easy to be committed by employees who are in positions that are more likely to have access to users' personal information, such as salespersons, account managers, and business system maintenance. Operators with relevant work facilities are advised to always be vigilant about user information security, and never lose sight of the greater for the sake of marketing, let alone intentionally committing crimes.

III. High-tech crimes that damage computer information systems are common

As operators pay more and more attention to recruiting and training technical personnel such as DICT, related illegal and criminal activities have also become more frequent. Public cases from the China Judgment Documents Network show that across the country, there have been many cases of operators' employees destroying computer information systems (commonly known as "hackers") and committing crimes.

Compared with external computer technicians, computer experts of operators are more likely to obtain business system keys and are more aware of the loopholes in business systems. Driven by financial interests, some computer experts within operators collude with illegal analysts outside, or are willing to be hunted by illegal elements outside, and implant "Trojans" and other programs in business systems to steal user information or Internet traffic.

Generally speaking, this kind of high-tech illegal and criminal behavior is not easy to be discovered, after all, most of the operators' employees do not have the technical ability to fight against "hackers". However, once discovered, this kind of illegal behavior will inevitably result in a huge amount of money involved, which will not only cause great trouble to users, but also bring huge economic losses to operators.

In response to this type of high-tech illegal and criminal behavior, managers at all levels of operators should strengthen the education and supervision of key positions and key technical experts. On the one hand, they should constantly strengthen the integrity awareness of all employees, especially computer experts, and on the other hand, they should also pay more attention to employees' daily behavior, such as whether there is abnormal consumption that obviously exceeds personal income levels.

4. "Theft by the custodian" crimes still occur from time to time in some positions

Compared with other industries, the telecommunications industry where operators are located has a higher level of information management, and various basic management is relatively standardized. Although there are various measures to prevent risks online, this cannot effectively stop some operators' employees from "stealing from the company". This "stealing from the company" includes stealing tangible items such as optical cables and cables, as well as intangible services such as mobile phone traffic.

It is easier for people to understand the criminal behavior of employees stealing tangible items. After all, it is not easy to detect when something is happening, especially those thefts that are like ants moving houses. In fact, from a strict legal perspective, theft that takes advantage of one's position should be classified as embezzlement. If you understand embezzlement, then it is easier to understand the operation of stealing intangible traffic.

Public media reports and multiple public cases on the China Judgment Documents Network have shown that some operators’ employees have used their positions to handle business for users and committed illegal and criminal acts of stealing user traffic. From the public cases found, many cases of stealing user traffic involved huge amounts of money. This is because these employees resell the stolen user traffic for profit.

For corporate users, if the traffic stored in the operator's business account is stolen, it is generally not easy for the enterprise itself to discover it. Unless the operator discovers it through various internal inspections, this theft will continue for a long time, which not only causes economic losses to corporate users, but also causes great damage to the operator's own reputation.

5. Criminal acts such as corruption and bribery have also shown a trend of becoming more low-level

Around 2015, many senior managers of operators were held accountable for suspected corruption and bribery. I believe everyone knows the more well-known ones. From public media reports, it can be seen that corruption and bribery by operators rarely involve senior managers, but corruption and bribery by mid-level and low-level managers and grassroots employees are increasing.

Why has this change occurred? There are at least two possible factors: the first is that senior managers have a stronger awareness of honest work, and even if there is corruption and bribery, it has become more invisible; the second is that the operators' internal operations to combat corruption and bribery are becoming more stringent, and many cases are discovered by the operators themselves.

Operators have too many management levels, the business chains involved are too long, and there are too many third-party suppliers around them. When these factors are combined, it is easy to magnify the management loopholes, which gives employees in key positions such as advertising management, engineering management, and procurement management an opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Driven by interests, many people go down the road of breaking the law and committing crimes.

Reducing management levels, increasing supervision, and shortening business processes will become the focus of operators' future reforms. The reason for this judgment is that in addition to the leading role of Internet companies, the sales transformation of operators itself means the reduction of management levels, and risk prevention and control is also one of the important factors driving the transformation.

Work passionately and live happily. Come to work happily and go home happily. It is not worthwhile to sacrifice your career for work, and it is even more not worthwhile to extend the impact of crime to your children and relatives around you. No matter how beautiful the night view outside is, it is not as good as a good night's sleep. Operators at all levels should firmly establish the concept of honest work and stay away from all kinds of illegal and criminal activities that are just around the corner.