Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
Fast online culture caused info leak
By Kim Rahn
Lee Jae-youn KIF research fellow
By Kim Rahn
Koreans focus on fast and efficient credit card use and online transactions, and that is one of reasons for reckless handling of personal information related to the cards, said Lee Jae-youn, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance.
He said Korea’s fast Internet environment has made it a strong country in online business, including online money transactions, but the recent massive personal data leaks at credit card firms are the side effects of such culture.
“We usually boast quick online transactions. But the efficiency-oriented mindset neglected security,” he told The Korea Times Thursday.
“In the data-leak case, too, where a worker at the firms’ credit information service subcontractor stole the information, the companies may have wanted information management work to be done quickly and allowed him to access to all data,” he said.
About the practice in which financial firms outsource such credit data-related works to save costs, Kim said firms should spend more money in data management even though it costs a lot.
He also noted government policies have encouraged credit card use, and made the card-use environment “too” convenient.
“The government has encouraged people to use credit cards under a goal of decreasing shadow banking and facilitating tax collection. While shops and restaurants used to accept cards of only a couple of companies in the past, now almost all stores accept all types of cards from all card firms,” he said.
Kim said cashers don’t even check whether the signature on the back of the card matches the one which the customer writes, although the signature is the only method of identification in Korea, which does not use personal identification numbers (PIN).
“As it is ‘too’ convenient to use credit cards, that becomes another reason of slack security.”
Regarding the measures against data protection which the financial authorities announced Wednesday after the massive leaks, Kim said they did not include fundamental solutions about information protection in card use and online transactions, but instead focused on sanctions.
“It is to be seen whether the increased fines will be effective. Financial companies may violate the regulation and continue to use customer data in marketing if the profits they can gain from such marketing activities are larger than fines they may have to pay for violations. I guess much larger fines are needed.”
Kim said one of the fundamental solutions to prevent credit card customer information leaks would be less use of cards. “Many other countries expand debit cards. Not many encourage credit card use like Korea.”
He also said the nation’s information security system needs an overhaul. “In Korea, resident registration numbers are linked to so much other data. The country needs other types of systems where not such much data is connected to one source of information.”