Personal data - Who is leaking out personal data to scammers?

'A former Singtel Filipino assistant manager leaked the details of 6 Singtel customers to a loanshark because he was unable to settle his outstanding debts with him.

I cannot help but wonder if our Personal Data Protection laws are more for show or do they really serve useful purposes?' Simon Lim in TRE

The above is posted in an article by Simon Lim in TRE. And we all know that this is only the tip of the iceberg. For every data leaked and discovered or reported, thousands more could have been leaked and undetected or unreported. And for anyone caught leaking data, there could still be hundreds or more out there leaking such personal data to make money.

I am sure many of you must have been bombarded by scam messages inviting you to gamble online or to take a loan. And many of you must have been threatened by phone calls impersonating banks and demanding that you call back. The most numerous calls that I am receiving, and still receiving, despite blocking the numbers, are from callers claiming to be from DBS and saying in a demanding tone that she had been calling me many times to call back.

Where did these scammers get our personal data and phone numbers from? From the banks they claimed to be calling from, in my case DBS, or from some other banks or other sources? Apparently this is a very lucrative business, I don't mean scamming and trying to con people to send them money, but the selling of personal data. 

Why is this so prevalent and what is the authority doing about it? Who are accessible to our personal data, who are in charge of our personal data? Is the authority investigating and trying to catch the culprits? Who are the likely people to have access to people's personal data and likely to sell them for profit? What agencies or businesses have the most of such personal data, especially financial data to tell the crooks that you are in need of loans or have excess funds to gamble?

To many this is just a nuisance and treating the calls as nuisance calls. But there will be some that would fall prey to the scam and ended up losing a lot of their savings.  This is a scourge, like loan shark harassment and needs to be terminated.

What do you think? Where is the first place for the authority to start looking at?

America - the most dangerous time for American leaders, politicians, news broadcasters and people

The senators and house of representatives, and even President elect Biden, cannot trust the military and police officers assigned to protect them, supposed to protect them.  Biden cannot trust his secret service body guards from assassinating him.

Can you believe this is America when the men in uniforms cannot be trusted, could be the terrorists in uniforms.

This is how dangerous America is today. They do not know who are their enemies. Americans are deadly divided into Trump's white supremacist camp against the Democrats and liberal Americans that embraced multi racial and multi culturism. The big danger is that the softer Democrats and free Americans did not know who are the supremacists other than those already exposed, and how dangerous they are, how deadly they are. 

Any time, any moment, any where, America could blow up into civil war. Anytime, Americans could be killed by the white supremacists. And these are not just the rough and violent thugs you see crashing into Capitol Hill Building. They could be your most trusted soldiers and police officers in uniform, the people that are paid to protect the Americans from harm.

Cannot imagine how the senators and representatives going about their lives not knowing when they will be hit. Their lives and safety are threatened, clear and present danger surrounding every one of them. 

This is prelude to war, the 'calm' before the storm. And they could not do anything about it, because Donald Trump has divided up the Americans with the violent ones waiting and gearing up to fight and to kill. The officers in charge they are talking to, thinking they are friends, could turn foes.

America can go up in fire any time, any moment, while the Democrats are still thinking that the rule of law will prevail. They are lying to themselves, in denial. The realities on the streets of America are frightening and scary. They did not know what their enemies are up to, how far they are prepared to go.  And their enemies could be standing beside them, guarding them, protecting them.

This is America waiting for when hell breaks loose.

Who is really in control, in charge of America, controlling the men in uniforms?

Can Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues sleep in peace?

COVID-19: While UK Is Learning From Earlier Mistakes, Singapore Loves Making More Mistakes

 

1984 George Orwell said...

COVID-19: While UK Is Learning From Earlier Mistakes, Singapore Loves Making More Mistakes

While the UK leaders are very worried, Singapore leaders are taking it easy, earnestly, relentlessly and happily keep importing new Covid-19 cases everyday as if there will be no tomorrow.

"Flexing the coronavirus lockdown rules could be fatal," the UK Health Secretary warned his people and government, as UK hospital admissions soar.

Matt Hancock did not rule out strengthening current restrictions and told the BBC's Andrew Marr the NHS was under "very serious pressure".

It comes after almost 60,000 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the UK on Saturday and the number of deaths after a positive test passed 80,000.

Scientist Prof Peter Horby warned that the UK was in "the eye of the storm".

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the rules were tough but "may not be tough enough" and called for the government to hold daily press conferences to avoid "mixed messages".

The UK recorded another 563 deaths on Sunday and 1,065 deaths on Saturday.

And Singapore's stupidly has no cure, gangho and ostrich mentality, happy-go-lucky millionaire ministers are happily relaxing the restrictions and asking for troubles before troubles come a-troubling.

Sunday's 42 new cases are all imported - the highest in 9 months, since March 2020. And no ministers or opposition leaders bother to voice any concern.

Everyone only worried about the economy. Economy no good. So import more new Coronavirus diseased people from India and Europe means good for the economy? What type of logic is that?

The 4G leadership is really out of this world, with out of this world happy-go-lucky, "gagi-buta" salary and bonuses.

Sad. More sad than USA Riots At Capitol Hill.

January 11, 2021 4:19 am

Covid19 - Chinese scientists and vaccines save the world

Chinese scientist’s spike protein research paves way for Covid-19 vaccine 

Wang Nianshuang, who designed the synthetic spike protein used in many Covid-19 vaccines. Photo: Handout

• Wang Nianshuang’s work on spike proteins was largely unknown until the new coronavirus emerged
• Thanks to Wang’s years as a researcher in an obscure field, vaccines were available in record time

Zhuang Pinghui in Beijing

5 Jan, 2021

The rapid development and delivery of a vaccine against the new coronavirus seems like a medical miracle, but not to the scientists who spent years pushing boundaries to solve the unsolvable. 

Among them is Wang Nianshuang, a former research associate with the University of Texas at Austin, who studied coronaviruses for eight years before his continuous hard work was rewarded with the pivotal design of a synthetic spike protein....

Wang’s design is at the heart of the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, as well as two others under development by Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. It was available so quickly because of his previous research, which went largely unnoticed at the time....

After more than 100 painstaking attempts, Wang was finally able to engineer the Mers spike protein into a stabilised state by making small genetic mutations to its encoding gene sequence. “It is like putting a steel splint on the spike protein to stabilise it in the pre-fusion configuration,” he said.

Wang was also confident the technique could be applied to different coronaviruses – “including new coronaviruses” – which all have very similar spike proteins. But, after completing his work in 2016, Wang’s paper was rejected five times by major science journals.

It was finally published in 2017 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and it would take a further three years – and the emergence of a new coronavirus – before the value of Wang’s work was fully appreciated by the vaccine industry....

 

Above article is from SCMP. 

 

China not only produced conventionally tested and proven vaccines for Covid19. The mRNA vaccine is also developed by a Chinese scientist, Wang Nanshuang in University of Austin. The success of his work did not come easy as his earlier papers were rejected several times and only surfaced again when Covid19 became a pandemic. His work became very important and finally recognised as a new method for developing vaccine that could be produced quickly to fight this pandemic. 

In other words, all the vaccines currently being used around the world, those in the USA, in UK and in China, were developed by Chinese scientists. Can't imagine this a few decades ago to think that the Chinese could produce the talents to solve this international health crisis, that the world would have to rely on Chinese scientists and Chinese technology in a major crisis like this pandemic.

Would the West want to acknowledge the contribution of the Chinese scientists or would clown Trump and liar Pompeo still insist that the Chinese scientists stole the formula from the West? By the way, did Trump or Pompeo know about this? Think they would not want to be injected with a vaccine invented by Chinese scientists. Maybe Trump already knew and thus refused to be vaccinated, refused to be saved be a Chinese developed vaccine.

The cries of Singaporeans, ... not new Singaporeans, continue

This is a real case which I recently talked to someone in a fortune 500 MNC operating a manufacturing plant in Singapore. The company hired more than 60% foreigners and of course we can’t fought that the operators are mainly from China, Malaysia and India. The management more than 50% are foreigners, namely from Europe and India, Singaporeans become a minority here. So I asked for more details about why. This is what I found out, he told me the head of the operations is an Indian VP, he is not located in Singapore but all the management under him were all Indians, not from Singapore. Whenever the Indian below him leaves, he would hire another Indian. So I asked if he hired Indian irregardless he is from Singapore or India, he told me he only hired Indian bornt India, yes he hired two Indian bornt but new citizens. So the whole team of operations management are made in India. Same for the other division led by another European, they hired their clique and all of them received expat benefits in Singapore.

So next I asked how about the quality of work since PAPPY said foreigners speak better English, more skillful and harder striving than local PMETs. He told me, they are mostly lazy, can’t even understand the accent some of them have and also their third world habits are very obvious at work where quality is sacrificed as quality is not valued in their country. To an extent, they hired an Indian FT contractor to do their outsourced IT and security and after many years discovered, he was playing punk at their manufacturing and overcharging many contracts. The day after the outsourced Indian FT left, the whole company was hacked and global locations all down.

Then I asked about Singaporean management in the company, he told me the Singaporean management is a Pro PAPPY voter, hired a Pinoy and Indian instead of Singaporean....

Dumb 61%

Above is part of an article posted in TRE by this Dumb 61%.

This is another one of the numerous cries of Singaporeans that appeared in the social media, definitely would not deserve a place in the main media. The same painful stories are repeated over and over again by a minority of original Singaporeans that felt disgusted and brave enough to cry out loud, hoping that some imbeciles would listen and do something to stop this scourge that is destroying their lives while making many foreigners happy, rich and arrogant and starting to despise Singaporeans while stealing their lunch.

Apparently no one cares other than paying lip service and even calling for more fake talents to be brought in. The undisputed mantra that has been in vogue among the MIWs is that foreigners are talents and Singaporeans are daft. Every wildlife brought in here deserves a permanent good paying jobs while the daft should be content to be PHV drivers or food deliverers or security guards. The females can be cashiers in supermarkets or checking people entering shopping centres, a highly sophisticated and demanding job that foreigners could not do. Think of the thousands of fake talents with fake and funny degrees now carrying titles of CEOs, senior managers, assistant managers and getting rid of Singaporeans under them to replace them with their own kind is outrageous to the core. A betrayal to all Singaporeans.

Can original Singaporeans do anything about this sad story, doing something for themselves or their children or grandchildren before this island, their home, is taken over by foreigners completely? Do they want to do something or already resigned in defeat, home lost, and given up recovering it?

There are so many things that can be done to right this wrong against the original Singaporeans that built this island, or their parents or grand parents that built this island in the difficult days of the 50s and 60s. They planted the trees hoping that their descendants could benefit from them but did not know that their descendants are being kicked aside while foreigners are here to enjoy the low hanging fruits. 

This is so pathetic. And their poor descendants, being called daft so often that they have lost confidence in themselves. Now the funny wildlife that have been allowed in to steal their lunches are calling them daft as well. And nobody that matters care to do anything about it.

Probably only when the imbeciles are kicked out of their million dollar jobs before they would bother to do anything. But then it would be too late to rewind the clock. It would be game over for the descendants of the original Singaporeans.

This is the new normal. Do not be despair, just be happy to be PHV drivers, food deliverers or security guards or cashiers or checking people going in and out of shopping centres. And let the foreigners be in charge, now in the corporate world, not too long they will take over Parliament and replace the imbeciles with their own kinds.

There is no point in crying. No one is listening. Everyone is happy with their millions, counting their millions and have no time to listen or to do anything meaningful. The die has been cast, and original Singaporeans would be history. Some historians in the future would write about the extinct Singaporeans and how they allowed themselves be led to the slaughter house, sheepishly, without a fight, without a sound of protest.