Personal information on dozens of Chinese Communist Party officials and captains of industry from Jack Ma to Wang Jianlin may have been exposed on Twitter in one of the country's biggest online leaks of sensitive information.

Posts on Twitter from an account under the name "shenfenzheng" — which has since been frozen — claimed to show everything from official ID cards to the residential addresses of prominent people in government, banking, technology and industry. In some cases, their children's alleged details were also published. Many of the tweets were swiftly deleted but Bloomberg verified that at least two of the ID numbers posted in that fashion were authentic.

The incident underscores the challenge facing China in policing the spread of information within its borders, even as it imposes rigid controls on the Internet through the world's largest firewall. It shows China is susceptible to the sort of privacy leaks that have become commonplace in other countries.