Data online bocor? Awas disalah gunakan pinjol!

Yesterday, cyberspace was abuzz with a data leak from one of the government agency applications, eHAC. According to BBC Indonesia, there was an alleged leak of 1.3 million user data of the application. [1]

Of course this is a very serious problem, leaked public data can be misused by individuals out there. Previously, data leaks in our country have also occurred several times.

Data leaks can also harm many layers of society, considering that the leaked data is very important personal data and information. Such as: full name, KTP/Passport number, identity card, address, gender, and other important data.

If it is true that the data was leaked and misused, there are several negative impacts that might occur. One of them is: used for illegal online loans, aka pinjol.

Maybe there are some friends who have experienced, where suddenly there is a pinjol bill even though we have never borrowed money online, but how come suddenly there is a bill?

Plus, often the illegal pinjol billing method is very disturbing. Everyone is contacted by them: from family, relatives, friends, even our acquaintances, and they are all charged in a way that is quite annoying. On SMS, on WhatsApp, on the phone, which clearly invades the privacy of all of us.

Things like this can happen for two reasons:

1. There are irresponsible people who use our personal data to make online loans and then run away, or

2. There are people who claim to be online lenders and use our personal data to collect, even though it is clear that no one has borrowed money from them.

Let's leave aside whether there really are people who borrow money with our personal data. What is clear is that the two things above can happen because of a leak of our personal data.

On the other hand, illegal online loans are also very troubling. Because they are illegal, there is no one to monitor them. They can set interest rates as they please, use tantalizing marketing techniques, and do other things that harm many people and the country's economy. Of course, they do all this for their own personal gain.

To prevent this from becoming more widespread, let's work together to protect our personal data as much as possible. Because that way, we can prevent these individuals from committing various crimes using our data.

There are several things we can do to keep our data safe, including:

- Change passwords of important accounts.

Try to change the passwords of various important accounts such as financial accounts, m-banking, email, social media, and so on. If necessary, change passwords regularly.

- Enable all security features.

Please activate all security features on each account that you want to secure.

For example, with two-step verification, either by email, sms, or other methods. You can also use trusted third-party applications.

It may seem a little complicated, but of course it is much better than our personal data leaking to the wrong person.

- Educate the people closest to you.

One of the main factors why our data is so easily leaked is due to the lack of public literacy about online data privacy.

There are still many people around us who easily click on random links, fill in personal data on websites of unclear origin, which are indeed prone to data leakage there.

Indeed, today's technological advances are extraordinary, and that is a good thing because technology has proven to make a lot of things easier for us. However, this progress must also be accompanied by increasing our literacy with other important things related to technology, one of which is data privacy.

 

Reference:

[1] https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/indonesia-58393345