Identity theft victims dragged into serious trouble with the authorities

October 20,2011, KUALA LUMPUR : A 25-year-old gave his MyKad to his boss on his first day of work. Now, he is facing 85 police reports for cheating involving RM180,000 worth of IT goods.

Woon Kian Fatt's ex-boss had used his personal information to cheat customers through an online shopping website.

Woon said he was shocked when a man appeared on his doorstep on Oct 9, demanding the return of goods that he (Woon) supposedly ordered from him.

“The man came with a copy of a MyKad that had my personal details but a different picture and told me that he got my address from the website,” Woon said during a press conference organised by MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong at Wisma MCA yesterday.

He recognised the man in the picture right away as his former employer who sacked him after he had worked as a despatch staff for barely three weeks.

The company was involved in selling IT goods on a local website.

Woon said he sensed something amiss after receiving a call from his ex-boss who asked him to lodge a police report that his MyKad was missing to ensure he would not be entangled in the company's problems.

Woon decided not to do so.

Instead, he lodged a police report on Oct 6.

“I am unable to secure a job now as employers would be afraid they will be dragged into this,” he said, adding that he wanted to clear his name.

Another victim of identity theft, Thiang Choon Hui, 32, said he did not think much when he received a call from a man alleging he was involved in a pirated DVD and CD business.

The man said he could help him settle the case but Thiang decided to ignore him.

The insurance agent's world came crashing down when he received a letter from the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Kuala Kubu Baru office about his involvement in the illegal business.

“When I checked with the Companies Commission of Malaysia, I found out that my name had been used to register a VCD, CD and DVD business which has four branches in Seri Kembangan and Puchong,” he said.

He said the commission should not have approved the registration without any supporting documents and a valid signature.

Chong said he had received 59 reports involving identity theft since last year, with victims facing bills amounting to more than RM4mil.

“In most cases, the culprits will use the MyKad details to apply for credit cards, loans and to register businesses and mobile lines,” he said.

(RESOURCES: Thestar.com.my)

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Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) on BFM

http://bfm.my/resourcecentre_20110707_joanne_liew.html

Brief History On Shredding

Shredding documents is nothing new and has been around for some time. With the invention of papyrus in 4000 B.C., the need to destroy documents began. Before that time, cave drawings and stone tablets made it impossible to shred much of anything. The Egyptians used papyrus as paper for writing documents. When a mistake was made, or information needed to be destroyed, the papyrus was torn up manually.

Since then, shredding has come a long way. The first machine-run shredder began in Germany in 1935. Using kitchen tools as his inspiration, Adolf Ehinger created a device that would make disposed paper unreadable. Adolf printed anti-Nazi material. When he was confronted about some literature in his garbage can, he decided he needed to do something to eliminate sensitive material.

His biggest inspiration came from a hand-cranked pasta maker, commonly used during that time period. With that in mind, he created a hand-cranked shredder that sat in a wooden frame. It had an opening big enough to handle normal paper. He later created one with an electric motor. People laughed at his device and thought it was pointless. During the 1940s, he sold the shredders to different governments and embassies.

Thanks to the Cold War, his device grew in popularity during the 1950s. In 1959, his company (EBA Maschinenfabrik) created the first cross cut shredder. Cross cut shredders take paper and not only cut it into strips, but cuts it in multiple directions to create confetti. Krug & Priester purchased the company in 1998. Paper shredders were typically only used by government entities from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Years before Adlof Ehinger created the shredder; A.A. Low patented the idea of a paper shredder. A.A. Low was from New York City. In 1908, Low patented the “Waste Paper Receptacle.” Lowe’s Waste Paper Receptacle included a feeder and blades. It could use either a hand crank or a motor to operate. It also compacted the shredded paper. He designed it for use in banks, counting houses, offices and more. After his death in 1912, his inventions where auctioned off and were forgotten. Low was second only to Thomas Edison with his patents.

Shredders have played an important role in history. Shredders are sometimes associated with the term “Cover-Up.” The Nixon re-election committee used a Fellowes paper shredder during Watergate. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North used an Intimus 007-S shredder to shred documents during the Iran-Contra scandal. Cross cut shredders grew in popularity in 1979 after the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants. Documents at the embassy where only strip-cut, allowing the pieces to be pieced back together by Persian carpet weavers. Due to the Iran incident, the US government now requires strict shredding conditions.

(Resources: http://www.paper-shredder-info.com/history-of-shredding.htm)

Know Your Rights On Personal Data

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/7/1/business/9006473&sec=business

New Department To Oversee Implementation Of Malaysian Personal Data Protection Act 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 (Bernama) -- A new department is being established under the Information Communication and Culture Ministry to oversee the Implementation of the Malaysian Personal Data Protection Act 2010, scheduled to be enforced early next year.

Deputy Minister Datuk Joseph Salang said the new department was targeted to be operational by next year or earlier.

"As you know, to establish the department, we need to do everything right and this will take time," he told a press conference after the launch of the Information Security Summit 2011, here, today.

He said there was an urgent need for the government to establish personal data protection laws as there were a total of 17 million Internet users in the country.

"More than 58 per cent household broadband penetration is also a factor for drawing up the Malaysian Personal Data Protection Act 2010.

"Prior to the implementation of this Act, personal data is only bound by contractual agreement or common law."

Salang said the implementation of the Act would significantly alter the way personal data is collected, processed, stored and transmitted between individuals and commercial organisations in Malaysia.

"The givers will be able to dictate how their data is being used by a third party, as well as have clearly defined rights to access and correct their personal data.

"I admit that our digital infrastructure is still in its infancy and years behind the more mature infrastructure of digital goliaths such as the United States.

"But our digital infrastructure has a sound foundation through the establishment of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) and is reinforced by the commitment of the government to continually improve and upgrade our system through cooperation and smart partnership with the private sector," he added.

About 140 participants from the government and private sector, government-linked companies and embassies are attending the two-day Information Security Summit from today.

It addresses the key issues and challenges in information security faced by organisations across the industry, namely to integrate security into an effective IT risk management framework, build a security strategy to manage network security, data protection and leakage, and understanding the implications and guidelines to comply with the Privacy Data Protection Act 2010.

--BERNAMA

Shredding goes mobile with MyShred

Shredding goes mobile with MyShred

When Should You Outsource Shredding Function?

Outsourcing according to Wikipedia refers to ‘the process of contracting to a third party’. The outsourcing industry in Malaysia has grown so much due to government support and increased industry expertise. Its multi-cultural and multi-lingual strengths have also attracted business companies from Asian markets, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Malaysia has a booming service sector, shifting from its production-based economy to a rapidly expanding economy dependent on education and service. Malaysia benefits from its strategic location, its global integration, and its well-educated workforce. India maybe the leading nation for supplying outsourcing services, but Malaysia is not too far off and is placed on the second tier of outsourcing nations with countries like China and The Philippines. Statistics have shown that Malaysian outsourcing industry is predicted to be worth $2 billion by 2012 justifying that most organisations are moving towards acquiring outsourcing services.

Outsourcing can be in the form of bookkeeping and accounting, IT solutions, payroll, HR, consultancy and many more. Outsourcing helps organisations to manage costs and run operations smoothly especially for the smaller organisations. Although it costs money, the primary reason for outsourcing is to cut costs. In addition, entrepreneurs in smaller organisations particularly have a lot of responsibilities and tasks to handle and by outsourcing; they would free their time to work on higher priority tasks such as to increase sales. It is always good to outsource tasks that will take up your time and effort to handle but will take an expert less time to do it. Your business would not be able to survive, let alone succeed if you are busy spending time on tasks that do not really grow your business. It may take longer time, potentially more frustrating and subsequently cost you more.

Outsourcing your shredding function is no different to any other outsourcing services offered in the market. By outsourcing your shredding needs, not only you reduce employees’ time wasted on shredding themselves, you would not have to invest in shredding machines and maintenance fees associated with it. It is less expensive to outsource shredding function than shredding it yourselves. The only way that having your own shredder is less expensive is if your employees do not use it i.e. no shredding is done. An office with just a few employees can generate over 50 kilos of paper every month. That means many hours spent feeding a few sheets at a time into a small office shredder. In most small and medium sized offices, employees are already overwhelmed with work. It is not practical to expect that a busy employee is going to devotedly go through the time-consuming inconvenience of arduously putting everything they should destroy through a slow office shredder. More often than not, whenever they place the materials near the shredder, someone often decides to throw them out to avoid the hassle and mess. Even if an office shredder could keep up with large volumes of daily shredding, which it does not, what happens when you have to destroy more records than normal? Maybe you are cleaning old records out of storage or someone just cleans out their office. Even the slightest surge in the amount of material to be destroyed creates a nightmare for employees.

The next issue is whether you can trust your employees? When your employees do the shredding, 2 scenarios exist. You either have entry-level employees, in which case you may expose sensitive personnel records and competitive information to individuals not meant to see it, or management-level employees, who are especially busy and paid huge money to do more important work, to do the shredding. Neither situation should be acceptable in any organisations.

Hence, when is the best time to outsource your shredding function? The answer is as soon as you can. It will not only help your business to grow but also protects your business.

Value of Information: Why Organisations In Malaysia Do Not Shred?

Protecting confidential information is not a “good to have” feature but it is rather a critical need. Confidentiality means keeping sensitive or valuable information from unauthorised disclosure. In reality, we all know that company's internal information is valuable. Without it, it would be rather difficult to monitor your performance, plan your business strategy, bill customers and remain competitive. Some companies have accumulated masses of data which they have used to drive organisational efficiencies or performance improvements. In Malaysia, large organisations’ records of at least 7 years are normally kept in physical storage warehouse.

But do we ever ask ourselves have we done enough to protect our most valuable information whether it is personal or business? You lock all your doors, you roll up the windows, and lock your vehicle, and you keep your wallet or handbag on you when you are out in public. But why would you leave personal or financial information exposed and vulnerable by either dumping it or selling it for recycling?

Most data leakage problems are invisible, to the extent that without the right solution in place it can be impossible to quantify the damage. Any information or data leakages from an organisation damages the company's reputation, credibility and consequently continuity of the business. Leakage of information may result in even up to 20 per cent loss in a company's revenues. These costs do not include indirect costs that result from brand damage, loss from customer trust etc. The source of leakage is normally unknown. As an example, it takes little time for an employee to leak client details or company information without the knowledge of management.

It may be the case whereby, we accidentally exposed our personal information by dumping credit card receipts in the bin etc. Every now and then, we are faced with identity theft fraud which is the unauthorised collection and use of your personal information, usually for criminal purposes. Our carelessness in dealing with confidential information will only be realised when it is too late to react.

Why is it that organisations in Malaysia would rather recycle than shredding papers? The answer is simple. It is all about collecting extra money for the employees in charge of managing company records. By right, customers' information which they claimed to be theirs should not be sold as it is logically not their property. In fact, the costs of papers incurred by organisations should be recycled back to the business and not for employees’ pocket money.

Sure enough by recycling, you would save the environment but what is stopping you from recycling the papers after been shredded? It is obvious that the value of papers would be less when it is shredded and employees would rather sell than paying for shredding service which involves management’s knowledge and approval.

Many people fail to understand that the value of information is by far much greater than the value of paper itself when it is recycled. The consequences of information being possessed by competitors, customers, suppliers and public as such can be very damaging. Employees may not be bothered if their organisation is being sued. It is therefore up to the top management to correct this and change the mindset of their workforce. In reality, employees should care as there will be a domino effect on them if the company loses money. Jobs may be lost as a result of negligence in taking care of confidential information.

Prior to April 2010, there was no Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB) to penalise offenders. The introduction of PDPB which will be enforced soon however, should change the whole scenario and alter the policies of organisations. Companies would especially have to be careful when dealing with customers data. The consequences and penalties for it can be substantial and could go up to as much as RM500k.

Shredding own documents and outsourcing an external company to do it involves time and money, but one must bear in mind that information leakages can happen anywhere and steps should be taken to mitigate it. Employees may resent their bosses by exposing confidential information and are more than happy to make side income by selling the papers instead. Onsite shredding in particular is an effective waste-management process and benefits the environment as well as ensuring your confidential information is protected. 

Information is not only valuable when it is held but also when disposing it.

Workshop on Data Protection & Workshop on New Competition Law

Public Lecture on " Personal Data  Protection Act 2010: Good Privacy Good Business "

MyShred Mobile would like to wish all Happy Chinese New Year! We will be closed on 3rd February 2011 (Thursday) and 4th February 2011 (Friday) . We will resume for business on the 7th February 2011 (Monday).