Sued China Mobile for leaking Bitcoin account information, lost the first trial

    Mr. Wu lost the first trial in a lawsuit against China Mobile. Recently, the Municipal People's Court ruled to dismiss his lawsuit.

    Mr. Wu bought and sold Bitcoin (a virtual currency) online and bound his mobile phone number to the trading website. In November 2013, his mobile phone card was replaced by someone else. After obtaining the new card, the other person obtained the opportunity to log in to the trading website through the mobile phone number (reset the login password) and operated Mr. Wu's account, causing him to lose more than 380,000 yuan.

    On July 16 this year, Mr. Wu went to court with the mobile company. He believed that the mobile company's business hall authorized others to use his mobile phone number without his consent, which had a certain causal relationship with his losses, and he demanded compensation for all his losses (this newspaper reported on page 2 on July 18).

    The mobile company stated that manual review was carried out when the card was replaced, and the identity information was swiped through the ID card. Because the current equipment cannot be connected to the Internet with the Ministry of Public Security, it is impossible to determine the authenticity of the ID card.

    However, in the video provided by the business department, there was no footage of a mobile company employee comparing the ID card with the card issuer, and the court held that it had failed to fulfill its due review obligations. The business department also failed to make a copy of the ID card used by the card issuer and did not use a high-definition camera to take electronic images for archiving, indicating that the mobile company was at fault in its card issue behavior.

    After the trial, the court held that the Bitcoin account bound to Mr. Wu's mobile phone number was stolen by a third party. The mobile company is an operator that provides communication services, not financial services. Even if its card replacement review is not strict, it does not have the obligation to directly or indirectly manage and protect Mr. Wu's Bitcoin account. Based on general social knowledge and experience, the mobile company could not foresee the loss of Mr. Wu's Bitcoin account due to the card replacement behavior.

     Secondly, Mr. Wu stated in court that the other party logged into his account through email. The court held that this third party was familiar with Mr. Wu’s identity information, email, QQ, etc. When the third party used the mobile company’s card replacement behavior to commit an intentional crime, the causal relationship was interrupted. Therefore, there was no considerable causal relationship between the mobile company’s card replacement behavior and the economic losses claimed by Mr. Wu, so the court did not support Mr. Wu’s lawsuit.