Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has booked former CEO of Hanaro Telecom and the company ’ s 22 former and incumbent directors on charge of an illegal transfer of millions of customers ’ personal information . According to the police , the company has passed on 85 million items of 6 million customers ’ personal records without consent to about 1 , 000 telemarketing firms . The nature of Hanaro Telecom ’ s offense is much more egregious than the e - commerce firm Auction ’ s blunder in which personal information of its 11 million customers was stolen in a lump by hackers since Hanaro not only neglected its duty to protect customers ’ privacy , but also intentionally distributed the information for an illegal profit . The recent fiascos of Hanaro Telecom and Auction remind us of the need for scrutiny into whether other communication firms and internet portal operators are fulfilling their duty to protect customers ’ privacy right and countermeasures against any such vulnerability . Furthermore , punishment on a wrongdoer such as Hanaro that does harm to customers via unlawful intrusion into their privacy should be intensified . The maximum penalty of 10 million won currently is inadequate to deal with such a serious crime . A revised bill of the Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection Act proposed by the government has strengthened the penal regulations to “ imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine not exceeding 10 million won , ” which is still meager in effectiveness to make potential lawbreakers to sit up . In addition , channels via which consumers can directly claim damages against an assailant company should be expanded and the judiciary needs to be more active in interpreting the law dealing with harm caused by leakage and abuse of personal information toward effective compensation for the damage . [ Translated by Sun - young Park / KHS ] [ ⓒ Maeil Business Newspaper & mk . co . kr , All rights reserved ]