Over 500,000 searches were made on Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority's (Acra) Bizfile platform from Dec 9 to 13 when individuals' full NRIC numbers were made available. This figure is much higher than the usual daily traffic of 2,000 to 3,000 queries, said Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah on Wednesday (Jan 8).
Over 500,000 searches were made on Bizfile during the five-day period when Acra unmasked the NRIC numbers of individuals registered on the platform.Over 500,000 searches were made on Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority's Bizfile platform from Dec 9 to 13 when individuals' full NRIC numbers were made available.
In a ministerial statement during Wednesday's Parliament sitting, Indranee addressed questions filed by MPs on the disclosure of NRIC numbers on Acra's Bizfile platform. Acra resumed the service on Dec 28, which no longer shows individuals' NRIC numbers, masked or unmasked. This is because the Bizfile portal is unable to track individual queries for the People Search function.
"Acra understood the directive to mean that it had to unmask, and display in full, the NRIC numbers in the People Search function on the Bizfile portal," Indranee said. It was not the government's intent for agencies to make NRIC numbers in their possession "widely and easily accessible", Indranee stressed.Following the incident, a review panel has been set up to investigate the root cause of the incident, said Indranee.
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