bare them out all.

picture taken from tv smith’s site.
does this looks familiar to you? is this the kind of form you see staring at you, waiting to be filled in, when say, you want to subsribe to listen to free internet radio or when you want to sign up for a tech forum?

yes! you are required to reveal this much information!

when i read tv smith’s latest article ‘the naked malaysian’, it reminds me of a feature article the star had on its front page on 9 august, tittled ‘easy to buy confidential information’.

in this article it was mentioned about companies selling your personal information to a third party, especially telemarketers. example:
A woman executive said she often received calls from banks and hotels promoting insurance and vacation packages.

“When I insisted to know where they got my name and mobile phone number, they told me it was from my mobile network company.” she said.

yes i remember about more than a year ago, when i wanted to make an online booking for a hotel in genting, there was some problem with it so i had to phone resort world (the company in charge of hotels booking). i was very surprised that the person who received my phone call, immediately address me as ‘miss lai’ when i had not told her who i was. seemed that they obtained my name (and address too!) from my mobile network company, and they knew it was me from my phone number. scary eh.

after that article of the star came out, another came out, in which it was mentioned that malaysia need a law to protect personal information.

duh! the ‘personal protection data protection’ bill was drafted in the year 2000 and it had been 5 years now, nothing had been done. and as early as when i started blogging, i.e. in nov. 2003, i had also blog on this matter.

like tv smith, i wonder why so much data is required when one need to buy something or sign up for something. to me, the 3 basic should be enough, i.e. name, address, telephone number (well ok maybe gender too). ok i know of course it also depends on what we are buying/signing up for. some, understandable, requires your birthdate and/or your identity card number. the thing is fine if we disclose our information but we need a law that will prevent our information from being ‘leaked’ out to others. even so, if there is such a law, i’m sure people will still feel paranoid in giving out so much of their personal information just because they want to say enter a contest. in my sister’s own words, “why they so kaypo one. everything also wants to know.”

they are not being kaypo (busy body), dear, but they are being smart, as they can make money out of your information.