Malaysian laws don't do enough to protect our personal data

In the last one week I received not one, but three warnings on my phone about Internet scams. Even more unusually, all of them were genuine. The first was a warning about e-mails purportedly from the Internal Revenue Board (or Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negara). It informed you that you had a tax refund pending that could only be banked in after you clicked a button to send them your bank account data.

A second warning came after a relative of mine received a phone call telling him that his credit card was overdue. He was then transferred to a police station in Kota Kinabalu where he was told drug dealers were involved and that he had to deposit some money into a bank account. A third warning came from the Malaysian courts about syndicates of people who masquerade as court officers, sometimes issuing forged letters purportedly written by the judiciary.