Telco being sued for breach of security

UPDATE: Celcom to probe privacy breach allegation.

We have a feeling that a number of you people out there have a feeling that your personal information is being hawked off by your telco.

How else would you explain the many unsolicited text messages that you’ve been getting from services you won’t even consider subscribing to?

Problem is, there’s really no way to prove that the telcos are indeed selling off your private information. The telcos will tell us that our privacy is important to them and that they will never release our private information to any third party companies.

Here’s the thing, the telco are just saying that they are protecting our data but there’s no real proof that they are doing everything that they can to keep our data secure. So we have no choice but to just take whatever they say as truth. Many however, take words from our local telcos with a healthy dollop of salt.

Just recently, the papers reported a CEO has filed a suit against a “telecommunications company” for allegedly revealing to third parties the contents of her text messages and recordings of her telephone conversations.

The CEO is claiming RM20 million in damages and grievances.

It will be interesting to see how this suit will unfold and which party the court will rule in favour of. We are particularly interested which telco is being named the defendant in this case. If the CEO is successful in her suit, this will set a precedent for more such cases to come flooding into the civil courts of Malaysia.

Then the telcos will have to take data security and privacy very, very seriously.

What do you think? Have you been getting unsolicited text messages? Do you suspect that your telco has been selling of your personal information?

Comment us.