Last month, the police in eastern China's Zhejiang province have arrested 22 people on suspicion of  illegally obtaining and selling iPhone customers data.

It was confirmed that the suspects worked in direct marketing and outsourcing for Apple in China.

The Chinese officials claim that the arrested searched an internal Apple database for sensitive info and then sold it to the black market vendors for between 10 to 180 yuan ($1.50 to $26.50) per piece of information. It is estimated that the suspects may have earned over 50 million yuan, which is the equivalent of approximately $7.4 million.

Apple users are probably wondering what sort of information was stolen/sold?
The data contained customer's names, phone numbers, and Apple IDs.

The illicit data trafficking in China is very common and popular occupation. However, the officials are convinced that the newly enacted cyber security law will help to change that. At the same time, the technology giants and large businesses operating on the Chinese market emphasize that the new law can give local companies an unfair advantage and could even be exploited to help officials steal trade secrets from foreign companies.