Cyber security and data privacy warning issued

By PETER ESILA
CONSUMERS, Government offices and organisations are not being mindful of cyber security trends and data privacy issues, says the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission.
ICCC joined consumer organisations around the world in Friday’s World Consumer Rights Day to call for “trusted smart products as our right to information and safety”.
Commissioner and chief executive Paulus Ain said Papua New Guineans should be careful when using smart handsets and devices, because data privacy was important and could be stolen by hackers.
He said the world was recognising the importance of data security.
“We need to be very protective of information dissemination,” Ain said.
“You send your bad messages, good messages. This information can be accessed by unknown people behind the scene. That is the very concern that this world is concerned about.”
Ain said smart technology was a growing global phenomenon which was changing the nature of consumer products and services.
He said that in the past five years, smart products outnumbered people three-to-one, with smart phone connections doubling from two billion to four billion since 2015.
“In light of this rapid increase, the need for relevant and appropriate information to consumers about the use of smart devices becomes more important,” Ain said. “There is an increasing responsibility on manufacturers and suppliers of smart products to provide timely and relevant information to consumers in the marketplace.
“Alongside this growth comes an increased concern about privacy, with 52 per cent of users more concerned about their online privacy compared to one year ago.
“However, the uptake of smart products and phones has been much slower in developing countries like PNG.” Ain said a reason for this was the high cost of data in PNG.
“We are not used to this technology,” he said. “It is just a transformation that came about recently, starting in 2007, when we first introduced mobile communication.
“That transformation took everybody by surprise. We are not culturally used to using some of these things.”