Don't you just hate it when your busy doing your work and suddenly the phone rang and the person on the other side starts talking about selling a product that you are no where interested in. The biggest problem is that they know your mobile number and worst, even your name. As of late, I myself have been receiving numerous calls from sellers of various products ranging from personal insurance, free medical checkups, personal loans, travel packages and etc. This can easily be called as SPAM! Vocal (oral) Spam! It bothered me quite as i keep wondering where on earth did they get my phone number from and how the heck did they know my name.
I had the opportunity to ask a few of the callers where did they get my number from. And apparently they would say that maybe its from a credit card service i subscribed or my mobile telco provider. And you know what? Its true! I found out that most banks and telecom providers sells our personal information (i.e name, mobile number and etc) to other parties. That would explain why i keep getting anonymous calls from sellers and also spam MMS from god know what content providers asking me to buy their product. They are getting money from selling my personal information and i'm not getting even a single cent from it apart from it actually being annoying to have some sales person contacting me every few days asking me to buy their product.
I found an article on The star online, "Know your rights on personal data". Finally an act to protect the consumers from abuse and illegal sharing and distribution of our personal data. Its actually illegal for the consumer's service providers to share or distribute our personal data to other businesses. Sadly this act is not yet in motion (supposedly next year). But to make it effective, we may have to re-read the agreements from our credit card providers (or any banks agreements for that matter) as well as telecom providers and make sure that there is no fine-prints on allowing them to use our personal data other than what is agreed upon. Again FINE PRINTS is a pain! That reminds me, i hope PDPA can also do something about fine prints. There should be a regulation on how small a fine print can be i.e must be of readable size and clearly visible. Some fine-prints i came across literally looks like a line but when looked under a magnifying glass, it unveils the fine-prints! Tricky and dangerous! S.C.A.R.Y.!
Anyways, this is my take. So beware of fine-prints. Always read any agreement letters thoroughly before even signing it .And always bring a magnifying glass! - to find the fine prints. You don't want to end up allowing (legalizing) others to abuse your personal information.As for PDPA, my first urge would be to ask them to look into Banks and Telco providers. They are the key players in storing most the populations personal information. PDPA commissioner must ensure they do not abuse the consumers personal data.
So for everyone reading this, i urge you to come forth with your story and together, maybe we can make a difference.
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