HONG KONG, Aug 14, (AFP): Hong Kong’s government was on Friday urged to launch a probe after six banks were found to have sold the personal data of 600,000 customers to insurance companies.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said each of the banks had sold the data of 30,000-120,000 customers — including details of their savings and credit card accounts — for marketing purposes over the past five years.
The authority said it made the discovery after surveying 25 banks on their handling of personal data after it emerged that e-payment operator Octopus Holdings sold the information of two million customers for 5.7 million US dollars.
The Octopus saga forced company chief executive Prudence Chan, who earlier denied the sales had taken place, to resign this month.
However, the HKMA said the city’s banking laws forbid it from revealing the names of the banks involved in the data sales, adding that they banks had already stopped selling the information.
The latest findings led politicians to demand that the government investigate the extent of the problem in the city.
“This is not just about the sales of personal data by Octopus and the banks. The same problem may be found in insurance companies, supermarket chains, and telecom firms,” Democratic Party lawmaker James To told AFP.
To said his party would hold a press conference and urge Chief Executive Donald Tsang to appoint a statutory body to investigate the issue.
“We need an inquiry commission with the power to assess the severity of the problem territory-wide.”
Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner currently does not have the power to summon witnesses to testify or disclose documents to assist an investigation, creating a loophole for any potential breach of privacy laws, To said.
The lawmaker also called on the six banks to come out and apologise to the public. “Apologising on their own initiative will be less ugly than having us find out who they are.”
The city’s largest retail banks, including HSBC, Hang Seng Bank, Bank of China, Standard Chartered, Bank of East Asia, China Construction Bank (Asia), and DBS Bank Hong Kong, said they had not sold their clients’ data, according to news reports Friday.


KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian state on Thursday launched the Islamic dinar and dirham as an alternative currency, allowing the golden and silver coins to be used as legal tender alongside conventional banknotes.
Authorities in northern Kelantan state, which is ruled by the Islamic opposition party PAS, said the Islamic currencies would be used in many shops in the state in addition to the national currency, the ringgit.
“We have over 1,000 shops that have signed up to our campaign and agreed to accept the dinar and dirham for the purchase of goods,” state cabinet minister Husam Musa told AFP.
He said signboards have been erected in the main market in the state capital Kota Bharu to show the conversion table between the dinar and ringgit, and participating shops will display stickers to encourage people to use the coins.
“The response has been very positive and all the coins which were worth a total of 2.0 million ringgit ($629,000) have been sold out at the launch today,” said Husam, who is in charge of economic and finance planning.
According to Islamic law, the dinar measures 4.25 grams of gold, while the dirham is 3.0 grams of pure silver.
A golden coin is equivalent to about 582 ringgit ($183) while the silver coin is worth around 13 ringgit but their values fluctuate according to market prices.
Husam said the dinar and dirham currencies can also be used dealings with state goverment agencies, such as paying “zakat”, or alms for the poor.
There has been a long debate in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country with large ethnic Chinese and Indian communities, to introduce the coins as legal tender nationally.
Former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose administration promoted a moderate form of Islam that emphasised economic and scientific development, shot down the proposal to use the Islamic currencies.
But his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad, was an advocate of the dinar system and urged Muslim countries to use it as a trade instrument.
The debate has died down since current Prime Minister Najib Razak came to power last year.