[logo.gif] Biz/Finance Monday, September 8, 2008 | 8:25 p.m. ET _______________________ [20080101_go.gif] [top_nation_bar_1.gif] +Login +Register +Find Id / Pw Home l Archives l Learning Times | Sitemap | Subscription l Media Kit l PDF [top_nation_bar_3.gif] Home > Newszone > Biz/Finance > [main_nation_top.gif] [right_nation_top.gif] [new_title.gif] [dot_15.gif] Nation [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Biz/Finance [dot_10.gif] Photo News Stock Market Watch Business Report Industry Report Financial Report Premium Brands Economic Essay Contest [dot_15.gif] Technology [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Arts & Living [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Sports [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Opinion [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Community [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Special [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] The Learning Times Editorial Listening Phone English Easy Korean Series Dear Abby Domestic News Foreign News Screen English [dot_15.gif] Jobs for Koreans [dot_10.gif] [dot_15.gif] Jobs for Foreigners [dot_10.gif] [view_top.gif] 09-08-2008 18:18 [list_bu.gif] [plus.gif] [minus.gif] [print.gif] GS Caltex Faces Class Action Suit By Kim Tong-hyung Staff Reporter In the self-proclaimed high-tech utopia of Korea, where people have broadband connections on subways and television on mobile-phones, a recent hot trend seems to be class action lawsuits. Police have arrested two employees of a subsidiary of GS Caltex and two accomplices on charges of unlawfully downloading customer information of the country's No.2 refinery and attempting to sell it on the black market. The suspects copied the private information of more than 11.25 million people, a number nearly equivalent to the country's entire adult population, on CDs, making it the country's largest case of data theft ever. The incident is the latest in a slew of public and private sector data breaches that have Koreans living in their own, depressing version of ``Groundhog Day,'' with security experts criticizing companies for their loose standards in privacy protection. Online shopping giant, Auction, is still struggling to recover from the public relations hit after it was revealed earlier this year that the customer information of the company's 10.81 million subscribers was stolen by a hacker. And Hanarotelecom, the country's No.2 broadband Internet provider, was hit by a 40-day business suspension in July after a police investigation revealed that the company has been abusing the personal information of its 6 million subscribers for illegal marketing schemes. Rival Internet carriers KT and LG Powercomm also received business bans on similar charges. The fallout for GS Caltex would obviously be bigger than any of the previous cases, causing an irrevocable stain on the company's image. And if blood-smelling lawyers have their way, the financial damage to the company could be significant as well. Lee Dong-gook, a Seoul-based private lawyer, began gathering applications for a class action lawsuit against GS Caltex and said he will be seeking compensation of about two million won per head. He said that plaintiffs have been awarded between 100,000 won to 700,000 won in similar cases in the past. Baek Seung-woo is another lawyer who is gathering applicants for a class action suit. ``Right now, we have set the compensation level at 1 million won per person, but could increase that amount depending on the investigation results by law enforcement officials," said Baek, who is also one of several lawyers involved in the class action suit against Auction. Hanarotelecom is also facing a number of class action suits from it customers who are seeking 1 million won in each in compensation. The recent data thefts are already causing disruption among Korean consumers, who find themselves more frequently bothered by unwanted sales calls and spam mail, while falling more vulnerable to financial fraud. According to a research by local software maker, Jiran, spam mail accounted for nearly 95 percent of the total number of e-mails produced during the first quarter of this year. The Korean Information Security Agency (KISA) said it received reports from more than 9,000 people last year who claimed that their resident registration numbers, a 13-digit code that indicates birth date, sex and site of registration, had been stolen. Security experts are claiming that companies should be held liable for the increasing number of security breaches, with many of them not bothering to encrypt their customers' data. A KISA survey of 2,500 domestic companies last year found that about a half of them (50.8 percent) hadn't spent a single penny to enhance information security. This apparently seems to be the case of GS Caltex, which apparently allowed employees to move crucial information on CDs, USB sticks and other portable storage devices while failing to monitor who was actually downloading it. thkim@koreatimes.co.kr [view_bottom.gif] Reader's Comments ▶ Other View Notice From KT Website Manager Bad language will not be tolerated. 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