Budi Rahardjo: Data Privacy Rules in Indonesia Are Still Slack

Jakarta: The issue of leaks and data privacy issues that are violated by a number of internet-based services has caught the public’s attention recently. This has become a concern because most people now use or even depend quite on the internet.

Computer Engineering Expertise Group (KK) lecturer, School of Electrical and Informatics Engineering (STEI) Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Ir. Budi Rahardjo, M.Sc., Ph.D . explained that security is closely related to confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Personal confidentiality is then referred to as privacy.

Budi said, there are two kinds of privacy confidentiality, namely the tighter and looser ones. “On the European continent, privacy is a concern that is very strict regulations. There are many regulations and mechanisms that must be obeyed. Indonesia itself is one of the more lax countries. This is more or less influenced by the social kinship system prevalent in society, “Budi said as quoted from the ITB website, Tuesday, May 12, 2020.

Budi said, the privacy bill in Indonesia had actually been planned for a long time, but until now there has not been an agreement. According to him, the regulations regarding this privacy should not be too strict, but there must still be clear regulations for data owned by business entities so that they are not traded.

“This is intended so that businesses such as MSMEs have no difficulty operating due to limited resources,” explained Budi.

However, there are several cases of fintech that offer credit, for example, if a customer does not pay off the loan, the fintech company accesses the borrower’s contact data and contacts the contact on his cellphone number so that he can help collect the party concerned. Things like this should be taken firmly because they violate privacy because the OJK prohibits it.

“Written regulations regarding privacy are certainly important, but we also have to consider our comfort with the entire culture. There is a need for discussion and sitting together, of course there will be pros and cons, ”he said.

Budi gave an analogy, if we go outside the house, we have to lock the door. The same thing applies if we are “surfing” the internet, we need to provide adequate protection for our security, namely giving a password.

The password that is set should not be letters or numbers that are easy to guess. “To create a barrier for hackers, the passwords should be made differently for each application,” he said.

The word you choose should not be directly related to the user, such as your date of birth or address. It is also advisable to have at least eight characters, because six characters are very easily penetrated.

“The more bizarre the combination and the more characters, the more permutations are needed to decode our passwords,” Budi replied.

Apart from having a password that is not easy to guess, we are also advised to have malware protection or other protections that can provide special notifications when there are signs of hacking on our accounts.

“Make it a habit not to be easily trapped by fraud under the pretext of sweepstakes or certain prizes, because once we click on the available links, they might break our security system,” said Budi.

Bluetooth shouldn’t be turned on carelessly either. Things like forgetting to turn off bluetooth have the potential to make our data can be downloaded easily. “Security is always against comfort. If we want everything to be safe, then we must be brave to choose a path that may be uncomfortable,” added the lecturer who is an entrepreneur in the IT security field.

He suggested that we have two cell phones. One that is used daily and another for data and important purposes such as mobile or internet banking. “We also have to update the applications we have and verify these important accounts,” he explained.

According to him, there are many ways hackers can hack privacy data. One of them includes public wi-fi that we might use. Even though it is difficult, said Budi, wi-fi which is a channel that is shared can also have the potential to open our account encryption.

Therefore, the application that we have must be able to deal with such vicious hacking attempts. “In this virtual world, there will always be code makers and code breakers, and along the way, code makers have won several times, interspersed with defeats from code breakers, and will continue to fight like that,” he said.

For that, said Budi, people need to rethink the security of privacy from a cultural aspect which is sometimes too lax. Like including date of birth, school alumni, and family photos on social media.

Because all the information that we upload makes it easy for people to do tracking. Even information in the form of KTP can be used to commit fraud by changing the cellphone number of the party concerned and breaking into the mobile banking, which is also busy, such as fake bank account fraud.

“Not to mention, the issue of leakage of cellphone numbers has become a fraud mode for requests to transfer a sum of money by informing a relative or family that is sick or needs help,” he concluded.

This article has been published on the Medcom website.