Data leak is bow a new trendy keyword in search engine to international headlines after Facebook got’s its data leaked via Cambridge Analytica months ago. Malaysia has its own cases too when over 100 million telco subscriber identity and information has been completely revealed online last year and up for sale in black market for a relatively affordable price for malicious organizations. This has raised the awareness of the user in their effort on data protection but the final path of securing data requires a good data protection policy from an company that held users data.
Astro, being one of the most popular local IP TV and a favourite for those who enjoy watching international shows, has been hacked once when all of its data released early January. Astro has since “promises” that such incident wouldn’t happen again but it seems like Astro effort on data protection is no longer reassuring.
In the newest update fro Lowyat.net, majority of Astro subscriber especially those who subscribe to IP TV services has been affected with its data up for sale for just 30 cents per user. Lowyat has reported that they have successfully crawled a spreadsheet which contains 5000 data which includes information such as name, NRIC, address and other personal identifiable information and it is just a sample and MORE DATA is up for SALE. There could be possibility that majority of data has been leaked online.
Lowyat and since then reported to Astro and relevant authorities (Thanks!) and Astro has released a media statement claiming that the affected individuals are “customers provisioned by Maxis only”. Nonetheless, the data protection responsibility are an effort between both companies and they have been bringing this matter to relevant authorities including Department of Personal Data Protection and MCMC.
