KUALA LUMPUR, 20th February 2023 – The Malaysia Consumer Choice Center (CCC) urges the Ministry of Health of Malaysia to immediately present security measures to protect against the theft of personal data of the MySejahtera application from continuing.
This follows the Auditor General’s Report 2021 Series 2 which revealed that 3 million Malaysians’ personal data in the MySejahtera application had been downloaded by the super-admin account on 28 October to 31 October 2021.
According to the representative of the Malaysian Consumer Choice Center, Tarmizi Anuwar urged the Ministry of Health to improve security measures to ensure the safety of consumers and things like this do not happen again.
“The Ministry of Health needs to act immediately to tighten the data security management system and the MySejahtera application as recommended by the Auditor General’s Report to prevent the intrusion of consumer data again. This is important to ensure that consumers are safe,” he said.
Based on the report, after one year and three months of the police report being made, the government has yet to identify the data fields that have been downloaded and are still under investigation by the authorities.
“The Ministry of Health needs to immediately take this action because after one year and three months, the Ministry still does not know or identify the personal data fields that have been downloaded. This is very worrying because more than 3 million user data is at risk of being misused by those who have downloaded it,” he added.
According to Tarmizi, the Ministry of Health also needs to take seriously the questionnaire conducted by the audit department regarding the perception of consumers of the MySejahtera application. Based on the survey, a total of 2,699 responses or 49.8 percent disagree that personal data is stored in the My Sejahtera application database. While only 1,168 responses or 21.8 percent agreed and the rest were neutral.
“Based on the survey conducted by the audit department, consumers are not confident about the level of security of the MySejahtera application and have concerns if their information or personal data is invaded by irresponsible parties.”
“Although it has entered the endemic phase and this application is not used as before but the consumer’s personal data is still stored in this application.”
“Therefore, the Ministry of Health needs to take immediate action and explain to public the steps that will be taken to deal with this matter seriously and be responsible in ensuring that this won’t happen again.”
