Privacy commission sees spike in complaints against lending apps

Bruce Rodriguez, ABS-CBN News, Jul 10, 2019

MANILA – The National Privacy Commission on Wednesday said it has seen a surge in complaints against online lending apps that are supposedly humiliating borrowers remiss in their payments by using their personal data.

“We’ve really seen a spike in complaints arising from allegations that their contacts have been accessed in an unauthorized way,” said NPC Commissioner and Chairman Raymund Liboro.

Complaining borrowers said the lending companies would access their contact list and send the latter messages to humiliate them for failing to make payments on time.

From handling around 400 complaints in May, the Commission now has 1,460 complaints against online lending apps, Liboro said. Out of this number, around 440 have matured into formal cases being handled by the commission.

Liboro explained that once they have determined that a business has violated the Data Privacy Act, they could endorse the case to the justice department.

Liboro also said the NPC was working with the Securities and Exchange Commission to determine how they could address the growing problem.