More than five-million overseas Filipino workers “sensitive information,” including addresses, health and financial history, and other private details might have been hacked and stole after two fake government internet domains were found that were used to process, use, collect sensitive information of OFWs, according to an overseas Filipino workers advocacy group.
The Lilac Center for Public Interest Inc. said that somebody have used the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and registered two Internet domains under the bmonline.ph and idole.ph which confused millions of OFWs.
‘This being the case, whoever owns the domain names bmonline.ph and idole.ph—and surely, it is not the POEA, could have access to valuable private data of five million or more OFWs.” Lilac Center president Nicon Fameronag said.
He expressed fear that the person or persons who had registered the two domain names and who administer the two portals could have already accessed OFW data and used them improperly.
Fameronag said bmonline.ph is the Internet site of the Balik-Manggagawa Online Processing Center which facilitates the issuance of overseas employment certificates to returning OFWs, while the https.idole.ph is the Internet portal of the controversial OFW ID Card.
“Both Internet portals collect, access, use, disclose, or process private OFW data or information,” he said.
He warned OFWs that their privacy might be compromised when using the two portals.
“By their domain names, .ph shows it is for commercial use and its registrar is a private businessman, hence, for profit, while the .gov.ph domain is solely for registration of Philippine government agencies.
“The government’s Internet domain names policy requires subsidiaries, attached agencies, and non-autonomous components of top-level entities to register their domain names under .gov.ph. They are not eligible to register separately,” Fameronag said.
The .gov.ph domain is delegated from the root authority to the Department of Science and Technology’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute. On the other hand, the .ph domain name is administered by dotPH Domains Inc., owned by businessman José Emmanuel “Joel” Disini, chief executive officer. This company also holds and maintains the database of domain names .com.ph, .net.ph, and .org.ph.