Baidu Vice President Xie Guangjun Resigns, Daughter Involved in Unboxing Incident.

On March 25th, rumors circulated online stating that Baidu’s Vice President, Xie Guangjun, had submitted his resignation. According to a report from the New Yellow River, a flagship new media outlet hosted by the Jinan Daily Newspaper Group, an internal source from Baidu mentioned that Xie Guangjun’s job information could still be found in the system, though the specific details are unknown. As of the time of writing, there has been no official response from Baidu.

Previously, Xie Guangjun, the Vice President of Baidu, had his daughter implicated in a case related to the unauthorized disclosure of personal information on the internet. At that time, Baidu responded publicly, stating that the information involved in the incident did not originate from within Baidu, and that no employees or executives had the authority to access user data.

Recently, widespread attention has been drawn to the actions of Xie Guangjun’s 13-year-old daughter on the internet, involving the act of “doxing.” “Doxing” refers to the practice of unlawfully revealing someone else’s private information, typically used in instances of online harassment.

The incident began when a pregnant netizen made a neutral comment on the Paris Fashion Week schedule of South Korean artist Zhang Yuanying on Weibo, which led to verbal attacks from some fan groups. Subsequently, the pregnant woman’s personal information such as ID number, phone number, and home address were exposed on Weibo, resulting in severe harassment in her daily life, leading her to deactivate her account and change her address.

By analyzing the information posted by the Weibo account “Your eyes are the smallest lakes in the world,” which exposed personal data of others, netizens deduced that the user behind it could possibly be Xie Guangjun’s daughter, Xie Andi. The clues included her father’s proof of employment document with a monthly salary of 220,000 yuan and shipping address.

On March 17th, Xie Guangjun made a post on WeChat Moments, expressing deep remorse and issuing a sincere apology to all those affected. He admitted that his daughter engaged in an online dispute, lost control of her emotions, and posted others’ private information from an overseas social platform on her account, resulting in the exposure of her own personal information and the spread of numerous negative comments.

Netizens questioned whether the “doxing” information used by Xie Guangjun’s daughter originated from Baidu’s database. While Baidu denied the information came from its own database, this incident has highlighted the public’s heightened concern for data security. Meanwhile, information related to Xie Guangjun’s daughter has been suppressed on mainland Chinese internet platforms, leading netizens to lament Baidu’s immense influence.

The Chinese Communist Party has long utilized high technology to extensively collect personal information of Chinese citizens for surveillance purposes. Additionally, a large amount of personal data flows into various illegal industries from the corrupt bureaucratic system, posing various safety risks for the populace.

At the end of June 2022, a hacker advertised the sale of data stolen from the Shanghai Public Security database containing information of approximately one billion Chinese citizens on the internet.