Malaysia’s communications regulator has assured the public that their privacy remains intact, despite a government move to hoover up data on mobile phone and internet usage as part of widening controls over online activity.
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The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said that the data being compiled under the government’s Mobile Phone Data project was all anonymous. There were no markers to indicate the identity of users, such as names or mobile numbers.
“At the point of submission [of data by telecommunications firms] … [the information] is already anonymised,” MCMC Deputy Managing Director Zurkanain Mohd Yasin told a media briefing on Monday. “The MCMC affirms that the data from [mobile network operators] is anonymous and does not contain personal identifiers.”
Industry sources on Friday said they had been instructed to hand over detailed records of phone calls and internet usage, ostensibly to generate statistics under the project.
The telecoms companies were told to furnish detailed call and internet logs for the first three months of this year, according to a letter seen by This Week in Asia. If they failed to comply, they could be fined 20,000 ringgit (US$4,700) or jailed for six months, the commission said in the letter.
The MCMC said data collected would be limited to details like the date of calls made via local networks or mobile internet, the location of transmission towers handling the calls, and the quality of the network used, such as 4G or 5G.
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