Legislator worried about Seniors’ security in Jollibee data breach

By Rose de la Cruz

Senior Citizen Partylist Rep. Rodolgo Ordanes expressed deep concern over the recent data breach of the system of Jollibee Foods Corp. which exposes the personal information of the elderly to identity theft and subsequent crimes against their properties and even lives.

In a statement, Ordanes said he is deeply concerned about “the potential use of senior citizens’ data stolen from Jollibee Foods Corporation for identity theft, scam targeting, and other cybercrimes.”

Names, addresses, contact numbers, and ID numbers would be enough information to produce fake IDs, make bogus transactions, and assume the identities of those people whose data were stolen.

Those data files may be held for ransom or could be sold to syndicates engaged in data mining.

I would imagine that JFC is doing everything it can to remedy the situation, he said.

“The targeting of JFC, which is one of the country’s largest companies, means no one is safe from these hackers. The private sector must invest in cybersecurity defense and offense.”

I hope the data breach is not worse than what is publicly known so far, but the damage is already quite severe because of the size of the compromised data, he added.

I also hope the incident will spur the Senate to move fast on the proposed Anti-Financial Accounts Scamming Act.

More funds and techie people are also needed by the agencies and organizations that fight cybercrime.

“Scammers often prey on the elderly because they can be easily confused about unfamiliar modern technology. Scammers have ways to identify seniors who have money in the bank or cash on hand.