State investigators raided the headquarters of SK Telecom in Seoul on Tuesday over suspicions that the country’s top mobile carrier illegally collected its users’ health records.

A joint team of prosecutors and government officials said they had seized documents and computer hard drives related to the health-care business of the company, which is suspected of gathering the information without the users’ consent.

Task force officials said that SK Telecom’s headquarters was subject to up to seven hours of searching on the data leak suspicions.

The mobile carrier’s sister firm SK Networks had been investigated on charges of leaking private information in September this year.

The task force, comprised of up to 70 officials who specialize in financial data and related fields, was launched in April after major credit card companies were found to have leaked massive amounts of consumer data. This incident, involving leading local companies such as KB Card, NH Card, Lotte Card and others, has prompted the government to step up measures to protect private information.

(wone0102@heraldcorp.com)