Do past employers actually provide this? My past employer in the UK was absolutely clear to everyone that joined something like "For staff that resign, we will

Do past employers actually provide this? My past employer in the UK was absolutely clear to everyone that joined something like "For staff that resign, we will only verify date an duration of tenure, and department and position title. All current serving staff are prohibited from providing references and endanger their position by doing so, etc..." Living in China, and with both very large and smaller companies (international and local) in HR or close-to-HR functions, the HR manager would most likely meet this request with the delete key on their keyboard, or at best a canned response. I share this because I'm surprised employers would actually disclose this, for how it can feed back on their own operations (for example, a predatory competitor using this information).