Thousands of govt agencies failed to protect personal data

The Office of the Personal Data Protection Commission has found that 5,261 organisations failed to protect personal data and they included 4,886 government agencies.

The PDPC office said it detected the huge privacy failure from Nov 9 last year to Jan 12.

It occurred in the form of unnecessarily extensive revelations of personal data on websites and a lack of security measures to protect personal data.

The 4,886 government organisations found deficient in this area were in both central and local government, the office said. It had already informed and told them all to fix the loopholes.

The office also said that it closed 23 Facebook accounts that illegally traded in personal data, and its investigations led to the arrest of five traders.