New Delhi, April 25 (IANS) Health charity UK Biobank has alerted the UK government after at least three listings offering datasets drawn from its research platform appeared on Chinese e-commerce marketplace Alibaba, a new report has revealed.

The listings were removed quickly, and no purchases have been reported to be made as none paid for access to the listings, the report from DW.com said.

Ian Murray, the Labour MP for Edinburgh South and a minister of state at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, thanked the Chinese government for the "speed and seriousness with which they worked with us to help remove these listings."

Murray said the exposed files did not include names, addresses, contact details or telephone numbers and that at least one of the datasets listed appeared to cover data from all 5 lakh volunteers on the platform.

These volunteers had provided to the UK charity in a bid to improve research capabilities worldwide.

"The government has spoken to the vendor today, and they do not believe there were any purchases from the three listings before they were taken down. Once the government was aware of the situation, we took immediate action to protect participants' data," he was quoted as saying in the report.

The report added possible data elements in the files included gender, month and year of birth, attendance dates, socioeconomic status, lifestyle habits, sleep, diet, mental health and health outcomes data, among several other things.

He warned that while the likelihood of identification based on these data is low, but it cannot be ruled out entirely.

UK Biobank suspended all access to its research platform as a short-term precautionary response to the leak and has implemented a strict limit on the size of files that can be taken off the platform, according to its chief executive Rory Collins.

"Secondly, we ensured that the Biobank charity revoked access for the three research institutions identified as the source of that information," Murray said.

—IANS

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