Personal Data Security

KOMPAS/MADINA NUSRAT

A monitor shows the requirements for a credit card application as it appeared on the website of an unidentified bank in Jakarta, which includes proof of income in the form of a pay slip and a bank account. Income information and other personal data are vulnerable to unscrupulous trading to promote banking products.

The government and the House of Representatives are expected to decide on a law on the protection of personal data so as to prevent the potential abuse of personal data.

Kompas daily published from Monday (13/5/2019) through Wednesday (15/5) reports on the sale and purchase of personal data.

Data containing names, dates and places of birth, people’s incomes, occupations, addresses and even the names of biological mothers have been sold without the knowledge of data owners. The rampant sales and purchases of such data is done by marketing officers of the financial services sector, such as banking and insurance. However, personal data is also sold freely online. Buyers use the personal data for various things, ranging from offering products to fraud. And we have frequently heard about complaints in the community or experienced this ourselves.

The practice of selling and purchasing personal data increasingly threatens individual security in the digital era. Every user of a digital website and social media account must submit his/her personal data in order to take advantage of the services being offered. The ease of processing large amounts of big data through algorithms encourages many business entities to seek out customer profiles and use them for other purposes, without the customers\' knowledge.

KOMPAS/MADINA NUSRAT

Customers walk by an ATM gallery at a shopping mall on April 15, 2019 in Jakarta. While the credit card business is expanding steadily, this expansion has not been accompanied by a guarantee on protecting customers’ private data, which is being traded freely among marketers and online platforms to promote banking products.

Lately, an increasing number of countries require online media service providers and businesses that offer services online to clearly ask for user consent and explain that their personal data will be taken and used for the interest of the service providers.

Problems arise when netizens are not aware that our personal data is taken and used for other purposes without permission.

Protection for the community has thus far been very weak. There have been no laws that regulate the use of personal data. In 2016, the government prepared a personal data protection bill. Since 2017, harmonization between ministries and government institutions has been carried out, but until now, the bill is still at the Law and Human Rights Ministry. Various laws that regulate personal data have not yet explicitly regulated criminal sanctions for its sale and purchase.

As citizens, we are obliged to provide personal data, such as dates and places of birth, addresses, occupations, names of family members and education for the purpose of population data registry. The government needs data like this to plan the direction of development and strengthen competitiveness as a nation. On the other hand, the abuse of the population\'s big data has the potential to endanger the country.

KOMPAS/RYAN RINALDY

Kompas researchers obtained a DVD containing the personal data of millions of individuals, including bank customers, through an online marketplace for Rp 250,000.

In return, the government is obliged to protect the public\'s personal data to prevent misuses by immediately making regulations and continuously improving digital literacy. More than that, the government has to encourage people to immediately adapt to the digital era.