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Doxing incident highlights personal data protection concerns
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An illustration for doxing. (Shutterstock/MinskDesign)
T
he recent doxing by an anonymous account on social media targeting a car passenger who was caught in a mudik (exodus) traffic jam and was seen shouting abuse at a police officer has raised questions over digital data security.
On Saturday, an anonymous account on Twitter published the person's private information, such as name, date of birth and a picture, which resembled a photo on an electronic ID (e-ID) card. The photograph had both the digital watermarks of “Ditjen Dukcapil”, the Home Ministry's population and civil registration directorate general, which manages civil registry data, and "Pusinafis Polri”, the National Police's Central Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (Pusinafis), which is a fingerprint-based citizen identification system.
It remains unknown how the anonymous account got the personal data of the passenger, who was on board the car with a second passenger and a driver.
National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the e-ID database is in fact managed by the population and civil registration directorate general, but stopped short of commenting on the police watermark.
"If there is [an indication of] illegal disclosure of private information by an anonymous account, the cybercrime directorate at the National Police's Criminal Investigation Department must investigate it," he said.
Read also: Cyberattacks increasingly frequent, targeting critical groups in 2021: SAFEnet
The alleged doxing occurred after a video recording of an incident involving the car passenger and a police officer during a mudik traffic operation made rounds on social media.
