Airline employee charged for leaking BTS flight schedule

The Korea Times has just reported that the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department's Cyber Crime Investigation Team has completed the case of leaking and trading flight information related to BTS and many other artists.

An airline employee accused of selling flight information of BTS and other celebrities is facing prosecution. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's cybercrime unit has arrested three people, including the main suspect, a foreign airline employee, and two accomplices who were arrested in February and March, respectively. The group is suspected of violating the Personal Information Protection Act by selling flight data of BTS members to brokers.

BTS members' flight data sold to brokers

PHOTO: NEWSEN

During the investigation, the police traced the suspects’ history of illegal information gathering and financial activities, thereby clarifying how the incident was organized for profit. The case file was transferred to the prosecution over the weekend. The police have not disclosed the nationalities or specific information about the defendants’ jobs, and have declined to comment.

According to HYBE (the agency of many famous Korean groups, including BTS and TXT), BTS is not the only group whose privacy has been violated. A media representative of the company said that in addition to artists under HYBE, many artists from other entertainment companies were also targeted. The defendants sold flight information for tens of millions of won. The brokers then passed this information to fans through direct messages or public chats on social media.

The managers of the groups said that there was a case where a crazy fan used flight information to reserve seats near the idol group and followed the members throughout the trip. In another incident, a fan on the same flight intentionally made physical contact with the artists.

The agency stressed that such privacy violations have seriously affected K-pop artists for a long time. They said they have worked closely with the police over the years to bring violators to light.

In September 2023, this unit established a specialized task force to handle this situation. The task force collected evidence from social media platforms and transferred it to the authorities for legal handling. In the statement, HYBE affirmed: “We will handle it decisively, requiring violators to take full responsibility. There is no agreement or tolerance for the act of trading and commercializing artists' personal information.”

The main users of passengers' personal information in Vietnam are online taxi brokerage centers established and operated by Vietnamese enterprises, instead of the taxi transportation companies themselves as before 2015.

In Vietnam, the leakage of customer information after purchasing airline tickets has also been a painful situation for many years. The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam has repeatedly requested airlines to review and have plans to prevent it, but the leakage of information continues. The conclusion of the Civil Aviation Authority's inspection in 2017 showed that the majority of passengers' information on flights was leaked by airline staff, airline ticket office staff or ground service staff at the airport.

In addition, airline ticket agents can provide information about airline passengers to organizations and individuals outside of the passengers booked, reserved, and sold tickets by the agent.

To effectively prevent information leakage, according to cybersecurity experts, the first thing to do is to plug software vulnerabilities, but more importantly, to build a monitoring mechanism for airline employees, and to take strong administrative and even criminal measures if information selling networks are discovered.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nhan-vien-hang-khong-bi-truy-to-vi-tiet-lo-lich-trinh-bay-cua-nhom-nhac-bts-185250724112641506.htm