What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn’t too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code — a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

If it can happen in Europe, it can happen anywhere. If it can happen anywhere, it can happen right here. With mobile phone penetration hitting over 100% in Malaysia, it’s scary to think the kind of information our mobile service providers are keeping about us. It’s downright frightening to realise that we have absolutely no idea. It’s even more frightening to think what those in power can do with such information.

Think about it.

While the Government and telcos are busy imposing taxes on prepaid packs and reloads, what are they doing to protect subscribers from scammers like this one.

These vermin are getting creative with the way they bait unsuspecting subscribers and its easy to fall into their trap if you’re not careful.

Don’t fall victim to such scams, following the instructions on the such messages will allow these companies to send more text messages to your mobile number and charge you ridiculous amounts of money for receiving them. Worst of all, it’s almost impossible for an unknowing subscriber to unsubscribe to the service.

Best to ignore such SMS and submit a formal complaint to MCMC and your service provider. At the same time the regulators and the industry are not doing enough to eliminate these scams. It’s disturbing to see that such scams are still running rampant.

Selangor State Assemblymen for Seri Setia and Parti Keadilan Communications Director Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad claims that reliable sources have informed him that Bukit Aman had called for a meeting amongst telcos to discuss the possibility of disrupting access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter on July 8 and 9.

If this is true, one can construe the order by Bukit aman to be in direct violation of the Malaysian Multimedia Act that guarantees that there will be no censorship of the Internet in Malaysia, and it contradicts what Prime Minister Najib Razak has said in April of this year where he promised that there will never be any form of censorship of the internet, though in this case the term censorship appears to be very vague.

Before anyone goes panicking, we must stress that this bit of information is remains UNCONFIRMED. Even if the meeting did happen it now remains to be seen if the operators summoned by Bukit Aman will execute the order to disrupt access social networking sites this weekend. But the reality remains, as with any heavily regulated industry, if the order does come it, there is very little the players within that industry can do but to comply to the directive.

We surely home that its doesn’t come to this.

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The days of specific number prefixes to identify telcos and 7-digit mobile phone numbers are, well, numbered.

Starting from December 15, all mobile operators will issue new mobile registrations with a universal prefix and 8-digit mobile number. However subscribers with existing (read: virtually everyone) 7-digit mobile numbers will not have to worry as they can still continue using their mobile number.

And it looks like DiGi is starting the ball rolling with this early announcement made on its website.

For those of you who are rearing to get a nice number with the new prefix we have to tell you that although MCMC stipulates that the date of implementation of this new 3+8 number system is December 15, not all telcos will be giving out 011 numbers on that day.

This is stated in DiGi’s FAQ on the subject matter which can be found here.

From DiGi FAQ Question 5:

Will the new 011 prefix be available from 15 December 2010 as stated on the SKMM announcement?
The date stated on the SKMM announcement (15 December 2010) is a target date by which all systems needed to launch the 3 + 8 number range for all mobile service providers should be ready.

and question 7:

If there are no 011 prefixes available on 15 December 2010, when will DiGi launch its 3 + 8 number range (011 prefix with an 8-digit mobile number)?
DiGi will announce the launch of its new 3 + 8 number range once on www.digi.com.my or www.happy.com.my once the 011 prefix is available for customers.

Some of you may recall that this 011 prefix is not new and was previously used for Telekom Malaysia’s ATUR 450 mobile service.

Official MCMC press release from MCMC after the jump.

MALAYSIA DUE TO START THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW PUBLIC CELLULAR PHONE NUMBERING WITH 3 + 8

Cyberjaya, 2 November 2010 – The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) today announced that Malaysia is in the midst of implementing a new public cellular phone numbering format which is 3 + 8. The announcement was made at a briefing held at MCMC Headquarters which was attended by industry members, regulatory bodies, the media, consumer forums and interested parties. The briefing sought to enhance participants understanding of the new public cellular numbering system.

The new public cellular phone numbering will take off with the prefix-011 followed by eight digit numbers (011 1XXX XXXX), set to be launched on 15 December 2010.

This is one of the long-term planning measures undertaken by MCMC after taking into consideration that the existing public cellular phone numbering format of 3 + 7 is running out and will not be able to support and accommodate the demands from the industry in the near future. This new implementation is also a result of the increase in the number of cellular service providers and the potential of various service applications which will be made available due to the advancement of communication technologies.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has announced that Malaysia’s Broadband penetration had exceeded 50% ahead of schedule with 53.5% penetration today. As a comparison, broadband penetration was only 22% in 2008 and the target is to reach 75% penetration by 2015.

The achievement he said was contributed by the efforts by both private and government sectors especially in developing community internet centres at rural areas. So far 6 Kampung WiFi (WiFi village) had been implemented with 3100 more expected to be completed by 2014.

Check out the video of the announcement by the DPM after the jump

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They were suppose to get back on their conclusion during that “week“. So far there was no mention about BlackBerry Ban and the rest of us moved on as if nothing had happened. We have always wondered what was the outcome of their “info gathering” as they left everybody in Limbo.

Now there’s a new update from Parliament. While replying to an enquiry by Selayang MP, Rais Yatim says that there is no plan to restrict Blackberry usage as they are convinced with its security in terms of data storage and transfer. After having discussions with RIM, he assured that users can continue to use BlackBerry services especially when it offers tremendous benefits to the business community. He also added that RIM expressed readiness to cooperate with our Malaysian government to obtain information and channel for continued use of the service.

BlackBerry users can now breathe a sigh of relief, unless of course the government starts lingering with the idea of banning again.

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Privacy has been a sensitive issue lately especially when people getting spam or have their conversations and SMS history leaked to the wrong people.

Just today, somebody has spotted a bug on Maxis Online Selfcare service. According to the blog post by Arsyan, he was logged into a different account when he tried to view his bills.

So what’s the big deal? Well, with access to someone elses online selfcare account, you can view their call history, personal details and even backed up personal contacts.

With immediate response as a form of damage control, Maxis initially tweeted back saying that this is merely a bug and he was viewing a test account. However at the same time, they also insisted that he pull down his screenshot of the page showing the victim’s details. When pressured further that their test account claim is bluff, Maxis replied the number may be real but the “so-called” profile and number are not related.

Of course being unsatisfied with the answer, he went ahead to confirm his suspicion by contacting the number to confirm if the person is real. As expected, it was the real person as shown on his Maxis login.

Arsyan isn’t the only one as another user also faced the same problem. From what we’ve understand, this has been fixed and we can’t seem to replicate the bug.

So what’s the story Maxis?

Read the full story here.

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Yesterday a CEO of a college in Terengganu had filed a RM20 mil (approx US$6.3 mil) suit against a “telco” for allegedly releasing contents of her SMS and audio recordings of phone calls. Looks like the alleged telco is none other than Celcom which issued a statement to the press yesterday.

According to Celcom Axiata, they treat privacy very seriously and they uphold strict policies to ensure the privacy of its subscribers are always protected. Its Chief Operating Officer Adlan Ahmad Tajudin said that such allegation by Noor Haslina is very serious but they have not been given much details of the suit therefore there was no basis to the allegation made at the moment.

He stressed that Celcom values and respect the rights of its subscribers and privacy & confidentiality of information is their top most priority. He also added if Celcom finds that the allegation was made without basis after its investigations, they will not hesitate to take necessary action including libel and abuse of court process.

According to the report by The Sun, Noor Haslina said she had made a police report on March 14. However her attempt to seek for solution from the telco was apparently ignored, which prompted her to take further action.

As mentioned earlier, the college CEO received a package at her office containing 9 pages of SMS exchanges and a USB flash drive containing audio recording of her conversation. To have such communication details obtained by unknown individuals is simply outrageous. If it can happen to her, it is possiblt that it could happen to anyone of us.

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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.

In what can be considered as a perplexing move, Rais Yatim who earlier ruled out the banning of BlackBerry services in this country yesterday made a statement saying that the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission is currently gathering detailed information about the BlackBerry service in the wake of bans of the service in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Rais said that the report from MCMC is expected to be completed sometime this week and that his ministry will be evaluating the information to see if a ban in Malaysia is required.

Wonder if a BlackBerry ban is a big enough issue to be discussed in Parliament? It’s definitely heaps better than talking in Parliament about this topic.

Looks like the 1.5 million BlackBerry users in this country are pretty nervous right now. Keep it locked on to SoyaCincau.com for the latest development on this.

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