UK investigates after big health dataset listed for sale on China’s Alibaba

Britain is investigating how data from a health charity came to be advertised for sale on China’s Alibaba, a government minister said on Thursday, including one dataset that appeared to contain information from 500,000 people.

Science minister Ian Murray told lawmakers that the charity, UK Biobank, had ‌informed the ⁠government on ⁠Monday that its data appeared to have been advertised for sale in three different listings by several sellers in China on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms.