Digital Tracing and Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act 2010 amid the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Digital tracing is a proven effective means for the Malaysian government to trace and control the spread of COVID-19. However, the process of tracing and tracking in order to manage the spread of the pandemic have in many ways compromised personal information to third party applications. Malaysia is not the only country that uses digital tracing to manage the spread of the pandemic. Various countries have chosen different methods for digital contact tracing to manage the spread of COVID-19 and some are less respectful of privacy than others. This paper analyses Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA) and its effectiveness in protecting personal data during the pandemic as Malaysians continue to utilise the contact tracing mobile applications such as MySejahtera and SELangkah. The researchers applied doctrinal research method and analysed the current Malaysian legislation on data protection. It should be noted that the PDPA does not apply in the case of government collection and would not require federal and state agencies to be transparent in their data management.

Data Privacy Practices of Private Higher Education Institutions in Malaysia: A Preliminary Study

“…Data privacy law in Malaysia is governed by the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA) that came into effect in 2013. The legislation was passed to govern the processing of personal data in commercial transactions and all matters connected or incidental to consumers' personal data (Leng et al, (2021). Processing as defined under section 4 means "collecting, recording, holding, or storing the personal data or carrying out any operation or set of operation on the personal data including the (a) organisation, adaptation or alteration of personal data, (b) the retrieval, consultation or use of personal data, (c) the disclosure of personal data by transmission, transfer, dissemination or otherwise making available, or (d) the alignment, combination, correction, erasure or destruction of personal data."…”