​Clarifying the issue of people having their personal information taken to open bank accounts

People gathered at Lao Bao Electricity Management Team to demand clarification on the matter of post office staff taking information and arbitrarily opening bank accounts.

On August 10, the leader of the People's Committee of Lao Bao town, Huong Hoa district, Quang Tri province, said that the locality is coordinating with functional forces to collect information and clarify the case of a resident whose personal information was arbitrarily taken by a post office employee to open a bank account when re-signing an electronic electricity purchase contract.

Previously, many people in Lao Bao town received a notice from Khe Sanh Power Company (under Quang Tri Power Company), requesting them to come to the Lao Bao Power Management Team headquarters, on National Highway 9, Lao Bao town, on August 8-9 to re-sign the electronic electricity purchase contract. The reason was that the contract had expired.

Upon receiving the information, many people were present, bringing personal documents to re-sign the electronic electricity purchase contract.

According to people's feedback, here, they were asked by electricity workers and some workers not wearing electricity worker uniforms to present documents, give their phones to the workers, and use their phones to take personal photos.

Soon after, many people discovered that their personal information was used to register for a bank account. Fearing that their personal information would be used without permission, from the afternoon of August 9, many people went to the Lao Bao Electricity Management Team headquarters to request clarification.

Regarding the above issue, a representative of Khe Sanh Power Company said that the power company only collects people's information to re-sign electronic electricity purchase contracts.

However, during the process of implementing the contract signing procedure, Huong Hoa District Post Office requested that post office staff approach people to convince them to set up digital bank accounts for the purpose of paying bills. During the working process, post office staff did not discuss clearly with people, leading to the above situation.

At around 10 p.m. on August 9, after Mr. Pham Ngoc Tien, Director of Huong Hoa District Post Office, made a commitment, the people left the power plant headquarters.

In the commitment minutes of Huong Hoa District Post Office, it admitted that "the process of implementing the wrong procedure was due to arbitrarily taking the phone and taking pictures of citizen identification cards and portraits of people in Lao Bao town, as well as using the information of these people to create accounts to open digital bank accounts (belonging to a bank) without the consent of the people."

In order to ensure the rights of the people, Huong Hoa District Post Office commits: "On August 10, the unit will conduct a full census of the names, ages, and addresses of all cake bank accounts opened on August 8-9 and report in writing to Lao Bao Town People's Committee and Lao Bao Town Police. Huong Hoa District Post Office is responsible for contacting the bank directly to cancel all accounts opened during the above period, and at the same time send a notification message to the customer's phone number."

Huong Hoa District Post Office is responsible for coordinating with relevant agencies including: Lao Bao Town People's Committee, Lao Bao Town Police, State Bank of the province, Department of Information and Communications of the province, to inspect and supervise the cancellation of the above accounts. At the same time, it commits that in the future, if there are any cases related to the leakage of people's information through the arbitrary opening of accounts in the past days, Huong Hoa District Post Office will be fully responsible to the people, local authorities and the law of the state.

According to VNA