UK braces for further leaks after more private health records appear on Chinese website

There have been further listings of confidential health records of UK volunteers on the Chinese website Alibaba since the breach reported last week and the government is braced for further leaks, the science minister has said. Addressing a House of Lords debate on the attempted sale of data belonging to 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers, Patrick Vallance said the government has worked with Chinese officials to remove additional postings on the online marketplace. “New listings will emerge – there have been additional listings posted since the government were made aware of the issue last week – and we continue to work with the Chinese government to remove them quickly,” Vallance said. The data is “de-identified”, meaning it does not include names, addresses or precise dates of birth. Vallance said there was a “low probability” of re-identification, but the breach should nonetheless serve as a “real wake-up call” for researchers. “It is increasingly possible to triangulate in large datasets and get close to identification, and that remains a very real risk,” he said. Last month, the Guardian was able to re-identify a single participant based in a different UK Biobank dataset that had been leaked online using just their date of birth and the data of an operation. …