There are a lot of information leaks in cross-border e-commerce transactions, which are mainly caused by two reasons. One is that the relevant information of the two trading parties is stolen by attackers, such as commercial secrets. There are two main ways for attackers to obtain information. One is eavesdropping. During the transmission of information on the network, attackers can illegally intercept and monitor data on the transmission channel to obtain sensitive information in the communication, causing online transmission information leakage. The second is to attack the database server, that is, to use the defects of the program or network database, and use a variety of technical means to bypass the security restrictions of the website system, program or network database, and directly obtain confidential information from the website.
The second is due to the lack of security awareness of related companies or individuals, or inadequate security protection.
For example, in March 2018, more than 50 million user information data on Facebook was leaked by a company called “Cambridge Analytica”. The source of this data leak was an application software “This is your digital life” launched in 2014 by Aleksandr Kogan, a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge in the UK. The app provides personality analysis tests to Facebook users, and calls it “an app used by psychologists for research.” The information collected by the app includes details such as the user’s address, gender, race, age, work experience, education background, interpersonal network, activities they usually participate in, posts they publish, posts they read, posts they like, etc. Since Facebook users are all over the world, in addition to the United States, some other countries have also begun to investigate Facebook. For example, the Israeli Ministry of Justice will focus its investigation on “whether the personal data of Israeli citizens has been illegally used, whether their privacy rights have been violated, and whether the provisions of the Israeli Privacy Law have been violated.”