Singapore’s Kbox drops the ball on customers’ private data. Who’s next?

Are you a karaoke aficionado? More importantly, are you a member of karaoke entertainment operator K Box Singapore? If so, you might be one of the 317,000 members’ whose private information got leaked out publicly earlier today.

According to a report by Channel NewsAsia, a group calling itself The Knowns had emailed links to a list of members’ personal information to several media outlets this morning. The list apparently contained data such as contact numbers, email addresses, NRIC numbers, dates of birth, and marital status.

The leak was reportedly done in response to the recent increase in tolls at Woodlands Checkpoint, which serves as the gateway between Singapore and Malaysia. The group described it as “an unnecessary financial burden on working Malaysians”, and adds that they have “done it [hacking] before and will do it again”.

If this situation sounds familiar, you might have read about the very recent security breach at M1, where a Computer Science masters student had managed to access forms showing data from customers while trying to pre-order the new iPhone 6.

The quick succession of security incidents makes it seem like it is rather easy to get access to sensitive customer information – and that likely wouldn’t be too far from the truth. In the M1 case, the student claimed that any sophisticated hacker would be able to download the whole database with just a few hours. Not too long ago, Tech in Asia also wrote about a ‘data broker’ who allegedly collected sensitive information from the customer databases of Deal.com.sg, Groupon, Zalora, Reebonz, CloutShoppe, and Lazada, and sold them at a rate of around S$1,000 (about US$800) for 300,000 names.

Most hackers tend to get away with it, too. Privacy laws are notoriously hard to enforce, as Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission does not police the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data by organizations – they would usually only act on complaints or tip-offs.

All this makes it very worrying for us living in an increasingly digital world, where almost our entire lives are up on the internet, and both corporations and governmental organizations aren’t giving us reassurances of their ability to guard them. I don’t know about you, but knowing that my life is literally in the hands of other parties makes me feel quite helpless. As Tech in Asia’s editor Terence Lee puts it:

As consumers, we simply have no clue how our data is being used and by whom, and that perhaps is the scary part.

See: Customer looking to preorder iPhone in Singapore finds security loophole instead