中国製「百度」軟件在日本

Recently the Yomiuri News on-line reported the following:

中国「百度」製ソフト、入力の日本語を無断送信

　中国検索最大手「百度(バイドゥ)」製の日本語入力ソフトについて、使用するとパソコンに入力した全ての文字情報が同社のサーバーに送信されることが分かり、内閣官房情報セキュリティセンター（ＮＩＳＣ）や文部科学省は、中央省庁や大学、研究機関など約１４０機関に使用停止を呼びかけた。

　読売新聞の調査では外務省のほか、東京大など少なくとも１２大学の一部パソコンで導入されていることが判明。ＮＩＳＣは「重要情報漏えいの可能性は否定できない」としている。

　問題となっているソフトは「バイドゥＩＭＥ」。２００９年に公開された無料ソフトで、昨年１月のバイドゥ社日本法人の発表によると日本国内で約２００万人が利用している。

　今月中旬、ＩＴ企業の調査で、初期設定のまま使用すると、パソコン上で打ち込んだメールや検索の単語、文書編集ソフトで作成した文書など、全ての文字列が自動的に同社のサーバーに送信されていることが判明。各パソコンからサーバーに情報を集め、変換精度を向上させる「クラウド変換」を行うためとみられるが、利用規約などで説明はない。

（2013年12月26日03時24分  読売新聞）

(試譯文)

     About the software made by China’s major search company "100 times (Baidu)", when the Japanese language input was used, it turned out that all the text inputted into the personal computer would be transmitted to the server of the said company; and the Information Security Center, the Cabinet Secretariat (NISC) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology appealed to 140 organizations for stopping using it, including the central ministries, the universities and the research institutions.

     In an investigation done by the Yomiuri Shimbun, it became clear that the software was introduced into some of the personal computers of at least 12 universities, such as the University of Tokyo, besides the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. NISC supposed that "the possibility of a critical information disclosure cannot be ruled out".

     The software which posed a problem was the "Baidu IME". According to the announcement of the Baidu Company’s affiliated company in Japan in January last year, with the free software exhibited in 2009, about 2 million people in Japan were using it.

     By an investigation of an IT company in the middle of this month, it became clear that if it was used for the initial setting, then when keying into the personal computer an e-mail, a word for search, or a document written with the text editing software, all the character strings would be automatically transmitted to the server of the company. Although the information brought together in a server from individual personal computer was seemingly for performing the "Cloud conversion" which could raise conversion accuracy, this had not been explained in the terms of service etc.

(03:24 on December 26, 2013    Yomiuri Shimbun)

I think “spying” for information is a sensitive word in these days.