Bank violations seen in NPC privacy sweep

BAGUIO CITY: The privacy watchdog is finalizing inspections of banks’ mobile applications and online services to determine their compliance with privacy laws and policies, with results expected to be released next month.

“We just did what we call privacy sweep for mobile applications and web services of banks,” National Privacy Commission (NPC) chief Raymund Liboro told reporters during a seminar in Baguio during the weekend.

Findings will be revealed in May, the last week of which was declared last year by Malacanang as National Data Privacy Awareness Week.

“[We are checking] who are excessively [asking for personal information], who are collecting [data] disproportionately,” Liboro added.

Ahead of the report’s release, he indicated that one bank had violated privacy laws by mandating 17 permissions for a customer to set up an account.
Another bank was found to be asking for the customer’s location, which Liboro said was unnecessary.

“They have to come up with a very good explanation on why so many [pieces of] data are being collected, kept and maintained,” he said.

Transactions can be considered void in these cases, Liboro claimed.

The NPC chief said banking institutions, along with other businesses or institutions that require data from clients, should carefully consider this as the information could be vulnerable to mismanagement or hacking.

Liboro said the NPC was looking to strengthen its coordination with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas with regard to banks’ data collection practices.

“We actually have talks with Bangko Sentral [but] not specific to this,” he noted.

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