REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Chairman of Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) Tulus Abadi asked government to guarantee the safety of mobile phone users personal data. His statement came related to the plan of re-registration of prepaid card users on October 31.

"The government should ensure that personal data of consumers are not misused for commercial or non commercial use, without the consent of consumer," Tulus said via Short Message Service (SMS) on Thursday (October 12).

He asserted re-registration must go through a process of communication and socialization that really reached the consumer. Tulus said, the authority should not block the customer's phone numbers in case the user do not aware of the policy.

Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kemenkominfo) would enforce a validation of customer registration number with citizen identity number (NIK). Minister of Communications and Informatics Rudiantara said cellular number registrarion is a government effort to prevent misuse numbers. It also protected consumers, especially for prepaid card customers.

However, Tulus argued re-registration would not effectively control the number of cell phone numbers or anticipate misuse, such as criminal acts. He assessed consumers were still given access to have more than one mobile number.

"It means, just like we know consumers still can have such as 18 cellular numbers from of a total of 6 existing mobile providers in Indonesia," Tulus explained.

Tulus said the number of cellular numbers in Indonesia currently reached more than 350 million. This was due to aspects of promotion and price war between mobile operators. 

During this time, consumers were also stuck with that kind of promotion, which was very misleading.

Therefore, he asked the government to anticipate the upstream side first. One of the ways are disciplining price war and promotion that can mislead consumers.

"The government should not only controlling by collecting data," he added.

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