It's here ... Personal Data Protection Act 2010

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I get very annoyed when I received calls from telemarketers from banks offering free credit cards, or holiday resorts offering free holidays. There's always a catch because they are not what they seem. I just don't trust any of them. And don't get me started with the horror stories I had with them.

When it comes to trust, there is a bigger problem in the larger scheme of things. How in the world did our personal information such as emails, handphone numbers, addresses fall into the hands of strangers? There is no privacy anymore because your personal information is out there for everyone to abuse. And even worse, these people continue such acts with impunity.

Not anymore(we hope). Without much fanfare, the Personal Data Protection Bill 2010 was passed in April 2010 by the Lower House of the Malaysian Parliament. The details are not well known to many at this point in time but there are 7 salient points. They are

• General Principle
  
• Notice and Choice Principle
  
• Disclosure Principle
  
• Security Principle
  
• Retention Principle
  
• Data Protection Principle
  
• Access Principle
  

In short, the Act requires that the data collector (deemed as the "data user") must be responsible for processing the personal details of the consumer (deemed as "data subject"). These include notifying the data subject that his/her details are collected for a specific purpose and getting the consent of the data subject to use the details collected. Furthermore, the collected details cannot be disclosed freely without proper consent from the data subject.

Failure to comply to the Act would lead to penalties which include the imposition of fines and/or jail term of no more than 2 years. However, the right of the data subject to pursue legal compensation for non-compliance is not fully empowered.

All that sound good because to the man-on-the-street, such abuses are being policed but we can only move forward into a more civilized society when the implementation (and also discipline) of this Act is executed well.

To us at Real Data Matrix, we can finally speak about Information Compliance with more "meat" because we have more relevant privacy act in the digital age. And that is why we partner with Iron Mountain Digital for the Connected PC Backup solution.

It's here ...